


Circuitry and Reanimation

by Accidental_Ducky



Category: Resident Evil (Movies - Anderson), Resident Evil (Movieverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, M/M, Multiple Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:01:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26166805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidental_Ducky/pseuds/Accidental_Ducky
Summary: "Will you guys follow me," Alice asks finally."You already know my answer," he murmurs. "I've quoted it enough times and in plenty of situations. Your men love you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough.""Those situations weren't as dire as this one, Spence." He thinks of all the missions they've undergone, the closeness they'd had, of fists colliding and teeth digging in and most of all the little girl they somehow managed not to screw up too badly. He'd tried to betray her back in the Hive, but they've always been best as a team."I'm with you, Alice. Always."OR Spence survives the Hive, gets a boyfriend, and helps to save the world.
Relationships: Chase/Spence (Resident Evil), K-Mart | Dahlia/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 3





	1. Forgotten

Dolores wakes with a soft hum, dark lashes fluttering before her eyes open. She isn't sure, at first, why she's awake and staring around a room lit by a blinking, green light. In fact, she's not even sure that her name is Dolores, but it feels right. Her brows furrow as she sits up, taking in the antique rocking chair beside a window with its lace curtains drawn, the silvery moonlight casting strange shapes as it twines with the green nightlight.

She leaves the relative safety of her bed, bare feet pattering softly against a wood floor. She stops at a vanity and has enough sense to pull a sweater over her white nightie before continuing out of her room into a long hallway. It seems to go on forever in either direction, the ends swallowed by blackness so that only her silhouette is visible, thrown against the wall in flashes of black and green.

"Mama?" Her voice echoes slightly, giving the illusion of a cavernous space instead of a simple hall. She takes an uncertain step backward, back toward the space that so clearly belongs to her and the teddy bear that means protection. "Daddy?" Another echo and that's enough to have her fetching the teddy bear situated on her headboard, soft from age and the same brown as her hair. Dolores is tempted to curl up in her bed again, hide under the covers and ignore whatever it was that had woken her up, but something is wrong. Her memories may be on vacation, but she _knows_ that this house is never so quiet, the air so still. Something's off and she wants her daddy to make it better.

She squares her shoulders and marches back out into the never ending hallway, going to the left with her fingers brushing along the wallpaper. She stops at a room just fifteen feet away from her own, peeking in to find it empty and the drawer of a dresser pulled open. Instead of clothes, it's filled with weapons of all sorts, lit by LED lights hidden in the woodwork.

"Oh, boy…." She tiptoes past the empty room and continues down a set of stairs. She's almost to the bottom when she hears breaking glass and screaming, her fingers clamping down on the handrail tight enough to make her knuckles ache. She doesn't want to keep going, doesn't want to be a good soldier, but her feet continue forward all the same. She feels almost numb as she glides over the marble floor, stopping just short of what's supposed to be the formal sitting room once boxes are unpacked and furniture is delivered. There are black-clad figures standing amongst the shattered glass along with a man lying on the ground and a woman being pressed against the wall. "You stop that," Dolores yells. She strides forward, miraculously avoiding the shards of glass littering the floor. The figure holding the woman turns sharply and grabs the front of Dolores' sweater, keeping himself out of kicking range. "Leave her alone!"

"Report," the man demands. Dolores goes stock still, hands dropping to her sides as her brows furrow. "Report!" Her instincts say to answer him, give him a full report like the good, little soldier, but nothing comes out when she opens her mouth.

"I don't…. I _can't_."

"The house's primary defenses have been activated," one of the suits says. "Explains the memory loss." The figure holding Dolores grunts and shoves her toward the woman, Dolores tripping over her own feet. The woman catches her and hauls her up, wrapping an arm around Dolores' shoulders.

"What about the cop," Suit One asks.

"He's not on file, but the locals are a bunch of idiots. It's possible they haven't added him to their database yet," Suit Two says. Suit One takes off his mask and the others follow his lead, revealing middle-aged men and women, none of their faces familiar. "Should we keep him here?"

"Bring him along just in case. Prep for entry into the Hive." Dolores and the blonde are nudged aside, the mirror they'd been leaning against splitting down the middle and sliding open with a hiss to reveal a dim corridor. Dolores thinks of the never ending hallway upstairs, the echoing, cavernous quality, and she takes a step back.

"I'm not going down there," she says, firm. Suit One picks her up over his shoulder without even a grunt, trampling her fallen teddy bear and ignoring the way her small fists beat against his back. She doubts he can feel the impact through the Kevlar, but it makes her feel a little less like a sissy. "You guys suck! Let me down!"

"JD, Rain, scout ahead." Suits Three and Four—a man and woman duo who both look to be Hispanic—take the lead with guns held tightly against their shoulders. The corridor turns out to be more of a wide landing, the team heading to the right and down a flight of stairs into a vast cavern. The platform they step onto is filled with metal storage bins that tower over even Suit One, creating a maze that ends at a pair of steel rails and a train that sits on them.

"Are we riding that?" Dolores' fear has turned to something like excitement. What eight year old wouldn't love to explore hidden chambers and ride on a train? It's like Disneyland, but without the lines.

"If I say _yes_ , are you going to throw a fit?"

"Nope."

"And what will you do if I let you down?"

"Not touch anything?" Suit One sets her back on her feet, but he's got her sweater in his grasp again as he raises his brows. "Not touch anything," she repeats, ditching the questioning lilt this time. If she gets to ride that train, then she'll promise almost anything.

"Stay." He lets her go and stalks away, leaving Dolores and the blonde woman by themselves. Dolores looks up at her, tugging on her wrist lightly until the blonde is looking down at her.

"I'm gonna call you Mama." The blonde opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, makes a weird choking noise, and then settles on bewilderment. "You can call me Dollie. I think my name's Dolores, but that makes me sound like an old lady, so I wanna be called Dollie. What's your name?"

"I don't know," she murmurs.

"What do you want your name to be?" She flounders again, blue eyes darting around to take in the strangers swarming around them like ants as they load bins onto the train. Dolores likes trains, her daddy says they're rad. She doesn't remember her daddy much, but there's a warm feeling of protection that blankets her when she thinks of him.

"How about we just stick with Mama until I figure that out?" Dolores nods once, a sharp, decisive move that seems to make Mama a little uncomfortable. Dolores ignores that, sneaking a glance at the suits before shuffling half a foot to her right. The bins all have the same logo, red and white triangles that form the name printed in bold white beneath it: UMBRELLA.

"What's Umbrella?"

"A whole lot of trouble," says the man without a suit. He's tall and broad through everything, his blue button-down straining across his shoulders with the way his wrists are cuffed behind his back. He's not her daddy, he's just another stranger that likes to break windows. Dolores turns her back on him, focusing back on the bins and wondering what kind of secret treasures they hold. She's just about got one of the latches undone when a glove-clad hand clamps down over her own.

"What did we agree you wouldn't do," Suit One asks. There's no amusement in his tone and she recognizes the warning in his eyes.

"Not touch stuff."

"And what were you doing?"

"Touching stuff." She heaves a dramatic sigh that has Mama smiling behind her hand, but Suit One doesn't look impressed. If anything, he looks like he's considering stuffing her in a bin and leaving her here. Well, joke's on him, she's small enough to fit with room to spare and she's got an imagination bigger than Daddy's ego. "Can we go on the train now?"

"Only if you promise to sit on your hands."

"You got it, dude." She gives him a thumbs-up and takes off like a shot the second he lets go of her sweater, bare feet slapping against the metal floor. She's not quite tall enough to climb onto the train's platform by herself, but the woman called Rain hauls her up with a faint curl of her lips that might have been a smile.

"Power's down," Suit Two says.

"So fix it," Suit One demands. Rain mutters an affirmative, dropping down an open panel on the train's floor. Dolores attempts to look down, but Mama tugs her away by the hand. "What did you promise, kid?" Dolores grumbles under her breath, but plops down on the cold floor all the same, hands pressed beneath her thighs. "Good girl."

"I'm not a dog," she snaps.

"No, you're not. Dog's actually listen from time to time." Suit One doesn't see it, but Dolores sticks her tongue out at him. Mama settles down beside her as the train powers up, a low hum that sets the floor to vibrating softly under Dolores' palms. Once Rain is back inside the train, Suit Two closes the metal panels with a press of a button. The train starts moving, slow and steady, nothing to write home about.

"Oh, neat!"

"You are one easily entertained kid," Rain says as she passes by. She stops at the door a couple of feet from Dolores, grunting as she tries to open it. "The damn thing's stuck."

"Why do you wanna open it anyway?" Rain doesn't answer, throwing her weight against the handle. It doesn't budge, stuck tight and keeping the door shut. Dolores thinks of a dark silhouette sneaking into a room lit by green flashes, warm hands turning her onto her belly and playing with the corkscrew curls at her nape. _Don't worry, Dollie_ , the silhouette whispers in a voice laced with some kind of accent. _After tonight, you'll never have to be a soldier again_. Dolores jumps as the door finally gives, swinging open and allowing a man to fall into the train. He's tall and lithe where Suitless is broad, features slack in unconsciousness and hair a stark black against his tan. Her own hair is almost that same shade of black, but it doesn't come from this man and her slim fingers don't come from Mama.

_Congratulations, you two_ , a man in accented English says, smiling hard and cold _, you're the new owners of an eight year old girl_.

Suit Five, another woman with her dark hair done up in a bun, kneels over the man and brings a tube of smelling salts under his nose. He comes to with a startled sound, eyes darting around wildly until they focus on Suit Five. She's saying something, but Dolores doesn't catch it as she leans forward. That dark silhouette is lingering at the edge of memory, a hard smile that softens at the edges, moving through flashes of green.

"What's your name," Suit Five asks. Her voice is gentle but firm, a veteran medic that's seen a lot worse things than some white guy with memory issues. The man gazes around like he's looking for an answer, a name spray painted in bright green on one of the walls.

"I don't know," he says haltingly.

"He'll be fine." She's talking to her fellow suits now, paying no mind to how the man sits up and shuffles against the wall. His arm brushes Dolores', warm even through his leather jacket and her sweater. He glances down at her and green-tinged memories flash through her mind; Daddy chasing her through a maze, curling against his chest in the winter as he read from a book, a hard voice barking out orders that she followed unfalteringly.

"Hey." There's no hardness in his voice just now, but it's the same one from her memory. "What's your name, kiddo?"

"Dolores," Mama answers succinctly," but she likes to be called Dollie." The man nods slowly, reaching out to pat Dolores' knee. That's how they pass the rest of the ride, a full ten minutes of silence and a warm hand on a cold knee. When the train stops with a squeal of brakes, that hand keeps her from falling sideways.

"I reckon this is our stop. Come on, Dollie." The man, _Daddy_ , stands and hauls her up onto his hip, carrying her out of the train and down onto a new platform that looks just like the one they'd left behind. Mama, Daddy, and Suitless all stick to the back of the group, letting the suits scout ahead in a controlled formation that's taken years to get so in sync. They make their way carefully through the maze of thick support columns and stacks of bins, taking long steps as though afraid anything else would mean destruction. Dolores glances up at one point, spotting the white security camera with its steady red light, another trigger for memories that don't quite feel real.

_Green figures swarm just outside her field of vision before coming into focus, hard faces of adults who have seen too much to be phased by anything. They watch her without a trace of amusement, passing a tablet between the three of them and using a stylus to sign their names._

" _She'll be good for your cover," Agent One says. He sounds Russian, an old Bond villain just finding out his parentage. "A couple of newlyweds and their adopted daughter will hardly raise suspicion in the locals."_

" _How will we explain why she isn't in school," Agent Two asks. This one is a man as well, brown eyes reminding her of cemetery dirt. He's got a tan, but her own complexion is more akin to a Hershey bar and she files that difference away._

" _She was bullied in her last school, so you'll teach her at home until she's older." Agent One shrugs a broad shoulder, long hair curling against his ears at the movement. He's much bigger than Agent Two and both are bigger than the lone woman. "Sound good?"_

" _Sounds good," Agent Three nods. Agent Three may not be as large as the men on either side of her, but she's far more hardened than they'll ever be. She reaches out, gold wedding band cold against the girl's cheek, dragging along the curve with a faint squeal._

" _Congratulations, you two, you're the new owners of an eight year old girl."_

Dolores lets out a faint hiss against Daddy's nape, cheeks feeling too hot despite the chill in the air. She gazes up at the camera again as they pass it and imagines what it must be seeing; figures moving on quiet feet, yellow squares colored their faces as files are pulled from the same electronic system that assigned Dolores to Mama and Daddy.

Another long flight of stairs leads to another landing, a long hall shooting off to the right while straight ahead is a heavy-duty metal door. There's no visible line indicating what it is and Dolores would have thought it was just part of the wall had Suit One not commanded Suit Two to get the door open. As Suit Two moves to do exactly that, Mama steps forward to Suit One.

"Who the hell are you people and what's going on," she demands. It's the same hard tone from Dolores' memory, the same tone of command that should make the addressee ask how high she wants them to jump. Suit One, however, is made of tougher stuff than that and seems content to ignore her until she grabs his arm and jerks him around to face her. "That was an order."

"Have you gotten any memories back," Suit One asks. Mama and Daddy shake their heads, then Suit One's gaze is leveled on Dolores.

"Flashing lights," she murmurs. "Green and red with black silhouettes." She shivers, tightening her grasp on Daddy's jacket. Suit One gazes at her a moment longer before looking to the adults.

"You three and I all work for the Umbrella Corporation. The mansion above us is an emergency entrance to the Hive. You are secure operatives placed there to protect that entrance."

"Dollie's only a kid," Mama protests. "And anyways, what about this?" She slips off the wedding band, the overhead lights glinting and flashing of the gold when she turns it. Suit One looks unimpressed, like he'd expected much more from Hive operatives.

"Dolores and your marriage is part of your cover to protect the secrecy of the Hive. No one in town will suspect any strange goings on if the people who move into the creepy mansion in the woods seem stable. Kaplan, show them the schematic of the Hive." Suit Two—Kaplan—nods and brings out a small laptop and begins typing commands so fast that his fingers seem to blur. A clunky, 3-D rendering appears on the screen, showing several buildings of various sizes that the computer names Raccoon City, then moves farther out to show the mansion looming over them. Beneath the mansion are various hallways and elevators that all form the shape of a beehive. _So much for being creative with their names_.

"What the hell...?"

"As you can see, the Hive has been built deep beneath the streets of the closest urban center. The only way to the Hive is by going through the mansion and taking the train to this platform." Suit One never raises his voice, but it's smooth and captures peoples' attention without a hitch. "Our positions are indicated by heat signatures."

"That's all well and good," Daddy says," but what the hell is the Hive supposed to do?"

"It's a top-secret research facility. It houses over five hundred technicians, scientists, and support staff. Their research is of the highest importance. Naturally, their research is classified."

"Oh, right, naturally." Daddy and Dolores share a wry look, surprise flushing through the both of them at how normal it had felt. More pieces of the puzzle fall into place, a bond starting to reveal that runs deeper than some stupid assignment. Dolores' eyes widen and then she's wriggling until Daddy sets her down again. "What is it, Dollie?"

"I know how to get inside," she calls over her shoulder. Dolores nudges Rain aside with a small hip, nearly making the suit trip over some complicated thingamabob in her haste. This close to the metal door, she realizes the keypad is just out of reach. "Uh, can someone lend me a box?"

"I gotcha." Daddy hauls her up with his hands under her armpits, bringing her level with the keypad. She glances over at Suit One, the unasked question hanging between them. _Can I touch things?_ Suit One considers the question for a moment, then shrugs in a way that clearly says _why the hell not_. She presses the number sequence in without pausing to think it through—142707—and the door rises with a hiss.

"Who wants to go down the creepy hallway first?"

"Not it." Dolores is set back down as Daddy turns to face the suits. "Quick question before we go any farther. Why the hell can't I remember anything?"

"The Hive's defense mechanisms are all computer-controlled," Suit One says with another shrug. "Something triggered them late this evening and the Red Queen went into lockdown. The bitch released a nerve gas through the entire Hive, your mansion included, and one of the side effects is acute memory loss. You could regain your memories in anywhere from an hour to next week."

"The Red Queen," Dolores asks.

"It's what we named the supercomputer that powers the Hive." Dolores grunts, turning to peer at the pitch black hallway stretching out before her. She thinks of an endless tunnel and playing cards that paint white roses red. _Off with their heads_. "JD, scout ahead." JD nods once, pulling a night-vision scope over one eye before heading into the darkness.

"We shouldn't go down there." It's a gut feeling that's making itself more and more apparent, roiling in her belly like a nest of vipers. "Something bad is down there." Suit One says nothing, he and his team focused on the yawning blackness with their guns at the ready. "Daddy, let's go back." Daddy doesn't say anything either, but he pulls her close and cards his fingers gently through her riotous curls.

A skittering sound, like long nails scraping over metal, has the three amnesiacs taking a step back, but then JD's voice echoes back to them and lights flicker on. Instead of another platform, the lights reveal a small lobby with a line of fake windows against the far wall and a bank of elevators on the left.

"The halon content has dissipated," Suit Five informs them.

"Halon is used in fire extinguishers," Dolores says, glancing around. The lobby is pristine, practically squeaky with how clean it is. "It doesn't even smell like smoke in here and there's no damage, so why would there be any traces of halon around?" The suits share a look over her head, but don't answer. She's really getting tired of having no answers.

"I guess it makes it easier to work underground if you think there's a view," Suitless says, a trace of bitter humor in his tone. The blinds along the far wall are real and creak when Dolores taps her fingers against them, even the glass is real, but the view beyond of a cityscape is just paint with small speakers hidden behind it that make sirens echo eerily.

"I have a feeling that the view didn't matter much if halon was sprayed down here." Another fragmented memory, a girl's voice issuing commands with a British lilt and an even fainter whine of multiple systems working at once— _Phase One Complete_. Dolores shudders and steps away from the group, pressing firmly against the wall.

"You okay, kid?"

"We're taking the stairs," Suit One says. Suitless is still watching her, waiting for an answer. She decides he hasn't earned one yet and follows Daddy down the stairs. The stairs curve in perfect rectangles, each curve leading farther down into the Hive until they finally reach the bottom level.

"Red Queen's locked onto us," Kaplan says. They don't stop their forward march, don't even slow down even as they pass another security camera. They don't stop at all until they reach a narrow hallway flanked on either side by glass rooms, flooded offices whose halogen lights make the water look yellow. One pane has a few chips missing, water steadily spilling out of it, but not enough to drain the office. "Well, shit."

"What's wrong?"

"We gotta pass through these labs if we wanna get to the Queen."

"Rain, JD, see how bad the flooding is. Kaplan, find us a backup route just in case." They answer with affirmatives, Rain and JD passing through the faint spray of dirty water without so much as a wince. Dolores glances up at the camera, the steady light that means they're being watched.

"What happened here," Daddy asks. "Why'd the Queen release that nerve gas." Suit One doesn't look like he's going to answer, not until he realizes that his tag-alongs are all watching him expectantly. He lets out a faint sigh and finally gives everyone the answers they've been after.

"The Red Queen went homicidal five hours ago, sealed the Hive and killed everyone down here. Once word reached HQ, my team was dispatched to shut her down and find any survivors. We're still not sure what triggered her defenses, but we think it might have something to do with an outsider." Their gazes all travel to Suitless, and then to the body floating against the glass behind him.

"Gnarly." The body used to be a woman, the bad lighting making her look jaundiced, even her lab coat is yellow. Dolores takes a step forward even as Suitless rears back in surprise, pressing her hand against the cold glass. "Dollie, get away from there."

"I think I knew her," Dolores whispers. Daddy pulls her back with a gentle hand, letting her bury her face against his belly. With her eyes closed, she can see a line of files, each one of them holding basic information and warped photos. She's too scared to dig through all of them, she finds that there are a few answers she'd rather not have.

"Do either of you remember anything," Mama asks softly.

"Nothing before the train," Daddy says. "What about you?" Mama makes an uncertain sound and Dolores doesn't have to open her eyes to know she's shaking her head in the negative. "What about you, Dollie? Anything new?" Dolores pulls back, spotting Daddy's jacket now worn by Mama over the flimsy red dress she's got on.

"Voices, mainly," she says, still in that quiet whisper. She doesn't want the suits to hear her, afraid of what they might say or do. "I remember a man giving me to you guys like I was nothing, like I was property." She doesn't like remembering that, doesn't like knowing that this couple is no more her parents than she is their daughter. No blood ties, just another soldier put here for a reason.

"No go, sir," Rain says, drawing Dolores out of the depressing spiral her thoughts were going in. "The whole level's flooded." Suit One glances around them, looking pained about something before squaring his shoulders. He's a good soldier, the type that will do anything to get the job done. Dolores isn't sure she should trust him.

"Alright," he states," let's move out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outfits](https://www.deviantart.com/thenewfiredancer/gallery/77343799/circuitry-and-reanimation-clothes)


	2. Fractured

Dining Hall B turns out to be a creepy storage room that's larger than the entire mansion above them. Heavy steel tanks the size of Buicks are lined up like soldiers, thick pipes leading to them and a low mist clinging to the ground. Dolores thinks of Wonderland again, of little Alice being swept away inside a bottle.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she murmurs.

"Halon levels are nonexistent in this room," Suit Five calls out. "The system must have malfunctioned or…." She gazes around at the tanks, glass screens fogged over and little keypads declaring the environment stable. "Or maybe halon would have caused too much damage."

"In any case, there might be survivors down here," Suit One declares. "JD and Rain will secure the prisoner here while the rest of us perform a thorough search of the area for any survivors. Keep the line tight." They move in two columns, one on either side of a row of tanks, flashlight beams creating yellow cones of light that don't quite cut through the mist.

"Anyone else feel like they're stuck in a Freddy Krueger fever dream," Daddy asks. Dolores raises her hand, then swiftly lowers it when he raises his brows and she remembers that she's not supposed to watch such films. "You and I are going to have a long talk later, little miss."

"We have to survive down here first," she points out. "Can't lecture me if I'm a ghost."

"Keep tellin' yourself that." She snorts, letting him swing their joined hands to and fro between them. She feels safe with him, less like property and more like a person.

They move at a steadily downward slope, down two halls until they're forced to stop in a small room. Three monitors are attached to the wall closest to the door while three desktops are set up on a simple table across from another door. Kaplan makes himself at home behind the screens and sets to typing. A few keystrokes have the door rising to reveal a short hall and another door.

"I'm not going down there," Dolores states.

"You and your parents will stay out here with Kaplan," Suit One says. "Everyone else, pack it up." Suits Six and Seven open the crate they've been carting around since the train, each of them unloading its contents into a couple bags before shouldering them. Suit One makes sure they have everything before heading into the hall made of thick glass. Lights flicker on, LED rather than the halogen in the labs, reflecting off the glass at a million different angles.

"It's automated," Kaplan assures him. Suit One nods and continues forward, attaching a little device to a keypad.

"Transmitter in position."

"Roger that. Running the bypass." A few more keystrokes has a faint beep echoing from down the hall, the door at Suit One's end swinging inward. Dolores can't see into the antechamber, isn't sure she really wants to. Suits Five through Seven move into the hallway with the heavy bags of equipment.

"What's in those bags," Mama asks.

"It's what's going to shut the Queen down. Delivers a massive electrical charge that scrambles the mainframe and forces it to reboot." The first door lowers behind the team, Kaplan watching on in shock for a moment before typing furiously. "It's some kind of dormant defense mechanism. It must have turned on when we opened the door."

"She knows we're here," Dolores says. She points at the security camera with the red light. "She knows _why_ we're here and she doesn't approve." She pictures the Queen of Hearts in her court, glaring down at Alice from her high seat and shrieking, _off with her head_. One of the monitors on the desk lights up with an alarm, blaring so loudly that Dolores flinches back.

"Kaplan, get that door open," Daddy commands, a hint of panic in his voice.

"I'm trying," he grouses. Daddy and Mama's voices overlap, adding to the chaos as Kaplan leans low over the keyboard. Dolores curls up in the corner, pressing her hands over her ears and closing her eyes. It seems to go on forever, the noise growing to a whole new pitch until it suddenly cuts off with the hiss of the door sliding up again.

"Oh, my God." Bodies are strewn over the glass floor, cut to pieces by something hot enough to cauterize as it sliced through them. Dolores stares in shock, recognizing a few pieces of what had once been Suit One.

"I guess it's up to us."

"Like hell it is! I'm taking my daughter and getting the hell out of here!" Kaplan's gulp is an audible thing, but he stands from the desk all the same and starts forward with short steps. He's barely inside the hall when Mama heaves a sigh and goes in after him. "Come here, baby." Dolores practically throws herself against her Daddy, letting him hold her tightly against his side. She buries her face against his belly as the door at the end of the hall closes behind the other two.

"This is bad, Daddy," she whispers.

"I know." The camera swivels overhead, settling on them with that steady light that means the Queen is watching. Dolores watches it back, thoughts spinning dizzily and a voice echoing in her head. It's not her own, but it's part of her, something buried deep down like a line of code in a computer program. The words keep echoing and outline themselves in blood red, practically neon behind her eyelids.

"We're all going to die down here."

The power blacks out and it takes Dolores out with it.

_Dolores is in her parents' bedroom, the only space in the entire mansion they willingly share. She knows they dislike each other in every way except physical, has seen their sparring matches turn into bones that snap like dry twigs and sharp jabs that bring blood against tanned skin in dark blue bruises._

_Her daddy is at the window, listening carefully to Mama's conversation near the cemetery and the woman she's talking to. He's got headphones on, so Dolores can't eavesdrop, but he keeps her close. More and more lately, he's been keeping her close. She'd asked him why last night and his answer had been simple,_ because you're my best girl. _She'd smiled at it, even laughed, but now she's wondering what Mama is to him._

_His smile when he slides the headphones off is cold and sharp like glass. He glances down at her and the smile doesn't soften, but his hand is gentle when he bends down to cup her cheek._

" _How do you feel about spying on Alice," he asks. It's the same tone he uses when he reads to her at night even though he's speaking of betrayal. She stares up at him, studies the way shadows gather to make him look like a stranger, the smell of autumn leaves carried on the breeze through the open window. "Can you do that for me, Dollie? Are you a good soldier?"_

_And, really, the decision is easy._

The next time Dolores opens her eyes, there's no flashing green light or lace curtains, no unsettling stillness or silence to speak of. When she opens her eyes, it's to find screaming and flailing bodies. The world is upside down and it takes her a good minute to realize she's been flung over someone's shoulder for the second time today.

"What's happening?" The words are slurred and sound foreign to her ears, belonging to a stranger rather than herself because she's never slurred once in her life. The world spins again, a sickening tilt, and then she's sitting on a hip rather than hanging like a sack of potatoes.

"We need a code, man," her handler's yelling. It's her daddy and she remembers him with only a trace of the fog clouding her mind. Percival Spencer Parks, Spence to his friends since he'd been teased mercilessly in school; he'd graduated top of his class in college, at the police academy, and then second below Alice once Umbrella recruited him. He gets angry and yells, but he also cuddles her when the night grows too close and the power threatens to go out. "Hurry up, Kaplan!"

"I'm trying," Kaplan snaps, shooting a growling _thing_ in the head. It's humanoid, walking upright on two legs and wearing office clothes, but half its face has deteriorated and there's no pulse jumping in its neck.

"What is it," JD yells, poised at the keypad of a door.

"04031965!" The doors slide open and a mob of the undead are unleashed, grasping hands pulling JD into the corridor. Rain rushes forward, doing her best to pull him out, but the undead are stronger and she loses her grip on his hand. She would have jumped in after him despite being outnumbered, but Kaplan and Spence yank her away down another hall. They don't stop for a long time, not until they make it back to the little room with its various monitors, dead security camera, and the Hall O' Death that leads to the Queen's chambers. By then, the others are out of breath and Dolores finds herself wanting to collapse against a wall or maybe punch it. Seeing as she's too drained to do much punching, she settles on the former.

"I don't understand," Kaplan says, face going green. "What were those things? What happened to all the people that worked here?"

"They died," Spence answers," and then they decided they didn't like that situation and rallied the troops. Living dead come back for some kind of showdown." He slides down the wall beside Dolores, thumping his head against it and closing his eyes. "Or maybe it's Judgement Day. Either way, we're massively fucked."

"I didn't sign up for this," Dolores complains. "I know my rights, no contract signed by a minor is considered legally binding." Spence raises his brows and she shrugs. "What? I watched a lot of Law and Order when you and Alice were playing tonsil hockey." He snorts, reaching out to pat down her curls.

"Did any of those episodes tell you how to get us out of this situation?"

"Nope." Outside the door leading to the labs, the undead horde growl and moan. There are thumps of palms smacking against metal, occasional squelches and the screech of fingernails.

"I have an idea," Rain says, staring down at her service pistol. "I got a bullet in the breech and an extra mag. I say we fight our way through to the train or die trying." She gives Spence an unamused smile. "We're fucked either way, right?" Spence looks ready to argue, even stands up so he towers over her, but then the door is opening and everyone turns expecting the worst.

"Don't shoot," Alice yells. She and Suitless bolt through the open doorway, the moans and groans unmuffled by thick steel, and then the door is shut again. "Is that door safe?" She jerks her chin to the door across the room and the others shake their heads.

"That's how we came in," Dolores says. "The undead masses are violently protesting for safer working environments." She snorts at her own joke even when no one else does. She's funny, darn it.

"What about down there?" Now Alice is gesturing at the Hall O' Death with its glass walls and bare floors. Suits One and Five through Seven are curiously missing and Dolores wonders if maybe the undead janitor is still doing its job. Poor guy deserves a raise after this, dead or not.

"No, the Queen's chamber is a dead end," Kaplan says.

"Then I guess that means we wait for backup," Spence says. "Who's up for a game of I-Spy?" Rain and Kaplan share a look, a full conversation playing out in a few eyebrow lifts and curling lips. "What? Umbrella will send backup when they realize you guys haven't checked in, right?" Another look, another conversation, and yet another answer Dolores isn't sure she wants.

"You remember those blast doors we passed on the way in from the mansion," Rain asks. "They seal shut in just under an hour and anything on this side of them stays trapped down here forever. I'm not trying to be a pessimist or anything, but I don't think any game of I-Spy can last that long."

"Umbrella would bury their own people alive?" Rain drops to the floor with a quiet _thump_ , sweat making dark strands of hair stick to her cheeks. She doesn't say anything for a long time, barely able to keep her eyes open.

"Containing the incident is the only fail-safe plan they had against possible contamination." She glances down to the bandage wrapped around her palm and wrist, the white cotton dirty and splotched with blood.

"And you didn't think to tell us that before we followed you half a fucking mile underground?" Spence's accent grows sharper as his temper flares, his sixteen years spent in an English boarding school making themselves known. "Who's bright idea was it, huh? Why did you let a literal _child_ come down here?"

"She's just as much a soldier as any of us."

"Umbrella recruits 'em young," Dolores muses, closing her eyes. "No one would ever expect a little kid to stab them in the kidneys and I'm the perfect height for it, I guess." But that doesn't feel quite right, the full truth evading her as it hides in the fog of amnesia.

"The only way out of here is with some inside knowledge," Alice decides. "Lucky for us, I know just the person." She grabs a black bag off the desk and marches down the hallway, Kaplan hurrying after her.

"What are you doing," he asks in a panic.

"I'm turning the bitch back on." Spence and Dolores share a look and then they're moving, too. Rain is a little slower, but her boots drag over the glass with faint squeaks as she shuffles behind them. The Queen's chamber isn't nearly as grand as Dolores had pictured it, just a small room with a complicated set-up near the back. Alice kneels in front of the set-up, pulling out a thick motherboard and bringing it up level with an empty slot.

"She's going to kill us."

"Bypass that circuit breaker, Kaplan." He grumbles but looks to the small computer built into his suit's arm, typing away and cursing under his breath.

"It's disabled," he says as the systems come back online. "If I hit the switch this time, the Queen will fry." A red hologram shoots out of the set-up, a little girl who had appeared in some of Dolores' fractured memories. The hologram flickers and dies away, then the girl's voice is coming through a speaker.

"I see that things have gotten out of control," the Queen says. Before now, Dolores would have said it was impossible for a computer to sound smug, but this homicidal nutball manages it with perfection. "I did try to warn you."

"Tell us about the T-virus," Suitless demands. There's a brief pause and a crackle of static, then the Queen's voice is coming out loud and clear again.

"The T-virus was a major medical breakthrough that also possessed highly profitable military applications. If infected with the virus, a human body will receive a massive jolt both to cellular growth and to the electrical impulses in the brain. Even a dead body has these things if it's fresh enough."

"It reanimates them," Dolores realizes with a sickening swoop in her belly. "It brings them back only not enough to keep them human." She looks to the camera tucked into one corner of the ceiling and knows she's right.

"That's correct. The subjects have virtually no intelligence and are driven by their basest instincts to keep them in a reanimated state. If they do not feed, even the virus will eventually lessen and they'll be little more than bones and rotten flesh." Alice winces at the mental picture.

"How do you kill them," Rain asks. 

"Severing the top of the spinal column or massive trauma to the brain are the most effective methods." Dolores wonders if she'll ever stop thinking of Alice in Wonderland and that scene in the movie that had so terrified her. The Queen of Hearts in her towering chair and the blatant terror filling Alice's face as her sentence is shouted—off with her head!

"Why did you kill everyone down here," Suitless asks.

"The T-virus escaped into the air conditioning system and an uncontrolled pattern of infection began. The virus is protean, changing from liquid to airborne to blood transmission depending on its environment. It's almost impossible to kill. I couldn't allow it to escape from the Hive, so I took steps. You must understand that I can't allow any of those infected to leave."

"Except none of us are infected," Spence says, striding forward with his gaze latched onto the camera.

"A single bite, a single _scratch_ , from these creatures is enough to turn you into one of them." Dolores glances to the bandage on Rain's hand, the way the blood on it has already started to fade to brown. "A check of my systems indicates my main drive circuit breaker has been disabled. May I ask why?"

"Insurance," Alice answers. "We need your help to get out of here. You lie to us or refuse to help us, we flip the switch so that you'll die, too." There's another moment of quiet where all that's heard are faint groans and crackling static. Dolores is just starting to think that they'll have to fry the Queen when she starts to talk again.

"There's a panel underneath Dolores' feet that lifts up. That's your way out of my chamber." Dolores shuffles out of the way, letting Alice and Rain lift the panel. Its hinges whine their protests, rusted from disuse just like the simple ladder leading down into the dark utility tunnels.

"Well, this is gonna suck. How about more directions?" There's a hum and then a sheet of paper is drifting to the floor from a printer, Kaplan picking it up and studying it. "Alright, let's get this over with." Alice goes down the ladder first, followed by Rain and Kaplan. Spence lowers Dolores down before following suit, the panel slamming shut behind him. "Rain, wanna lead the way out?" Rain doesn't look like she wants to do anything, but she dips her head in a curt nod and starts moving. Water drips down on them, piercing through steam that drifts out of interlocking pipes overhead and on the side. The floor is slick under Dolores' bare feet, a thin layer of slime sticking to her soles and adding to the feeling of disgust.

"Are we going the right way," Spence asks. "Feels like we're going in circles."

"This is how the computer told us to go," Kaplan says, holding the map up. There are water stains on it, a few holes now, but the black ink is legible. "It's not like we can head back to ask her since those damn scientists have probably opened the door by now."

"Let me see the damn map." Spence strides forward, then slips in some of the slime and falls back against a grate in the wall. A dozen arms shoot through the weakened metal, grasping and pulling as Spence begins to scream. There's no hesitation this time, the group working together to rip Spence away from the grate even as it starts to swing outward. "Son of a bitch!" The undead pour through the newly opened tunnel and a few more of them wander in from the direction the group had been heading in, forcing the group backwards.

"Get up on the pipes," Alice yells. "Climb!" The pipes are slick and hot, but Dolores has been climbing since she was four and it's easy for her to get on top of the pipes near the roof of the tunnel. The adults struggle a little more, they're longer than Dolores, heavier. Kaplan is just starting to climb when one of the ex-scientists sinks its teeth into his leg, receiving a boot to the face for its trouble.

"Get him up," Rain orders. Spence and Alice grab him under his arms, yanking him the rest of the way up and reaching down for Rain. She's not paying them any attention, though, she's more focused on what used to be JD. The undead still for a moment, long enough for Rain to hesitate with her finger on the trigger, then they swarm forward en masse. JD rips a chunk out of her non-dominant hand while another creature takes a bite out of her neck, but she still squeezes and JD goes down clean. Alice and Spence yank her up, too.

"Kaplan, you still got that map?" Kaplan tugs it out of his pocket, holding it up for her to see. "Pass it up to Matt and let's get going. No use staying down here and watching these things party." Kaplan hands the map off to Suitless and they start the nerve wracking crawl along the pipes, the undead reaching for them the entire time.

Once they're out of the tunnel, they're able to stand up and walk along the pipes using a few chains supporting the pipes to keep themselves steady. The pipes move underneath their feet, making Dolores feel like she's climbing up a net. She's just made it into an undead-free zone when she hears the sound of screeching metal and screaming.

"Stay here," Spence orders. He, Matt, and Rain take off back the way they'd just come from.

"Daddy!"

"I'll be right back, baby!" For once, she actually listens to an adult, clinging to one of the chains as the pipes continue their fun house swaying. There's more screaming down the way, panicked and pleading. The others come back minus Kaplan, faces gray and grim, and Dolores doesn't ask any questions. It's another mile before they come to a stop under a loose floor grate, Alice pushing it up and looking around before climbing out of the utility tunnel. Spence goes next, then Dolores, Matt, and Rain. By now the bites are affecting Rain, her vision practically gone along with her strength, so Matt and Spence support her as they head through the previously flooded labs.

"When I get out of here," Rain says," I'm so getting laid."

"What does that mean," Dolores asks.

"Nothing," the adults all snap in unison. She scrunches up her nose and stomps her foot, but she stays quiet. They can keep their stupid secrets.

The four of them are almost down the hall when they realize Alice has stopped somewhere behind them, staring vacantly into one of the labs. She's murmuring something, then talking louder for all of them to hear. "Blue for the virus, green for the antivirus. There's a cure." A light flickers on behind Spence's eyes, some of that coldness bleeding through the empathy so that he looks more like the man in Dolores' memories. "There's a cure," she hollers down the hall to Rain. "You're gonna be okay!"

"Oh, good," Rain mutters sarcastically. "I was beginning to worry." Spence chuckles softly, then he's helping her back down the hall and to the left with Dolores skipping along beside them. The lab they come to a stop in is still flooded, but not nearly as bad as it had been on the first pass through. The water stops at the tops of Alice's high boots, what would be low on Dolores' chest.

"Think we can take a break and swim," she asks.

"Why the hell not? One of us should have some fun." Dolores is just about to fling herself over the railing when Matt grabs the back of her sweater and yanks her back. "Come on, Matt. Let the kid enjoy herself."

"We don't know what's in that water," he says sternly. "There could be needles or scalpels."

"Buzzkill." Across the room, Alice yanks a door open and strides into a connecting lab. Spence heads down the short flight of stairs, moving slowly through the water until he can see inside the room. Alice comes out, a sneer curling her lips into something feral.

"It's gone," she says with a definite rasp to her voice. "The virus and antivirus both. I don't know how it…." She trails off, following the others' gaze to where Spence is standing as though lost. Is he remembering something like Alice and Dolores has? He's perfectly still, a sturdy tree in a tornado.

Dolores thinks of warm hands turning her, fingers playing with her curls in the purple of early twilight. She'd been sent to bed early by Spence, told she'd have a busy day when she woke, and then the fingers and a green-black silhouette and nothing. Everything goes blank after that like a wiped cassette.

"Spence?" Alice's voice holds trepidation, like she's coming to a realization that she doesn't want to be true. "Oh, Jesus Christ." It all snaps together then, pieces falling into place apart from a single one; Spence had never been loyal to Umbrella, to _anyone_ , all he'd wanted was money and attention. He turns his head lightly to the left, seeing the small table and the pistol Alice had left there before opening the lab door. Alice watches him watching that pistol. 

"Daddy," Dolores whispers. Alice and Spence move in unison, but Spence is closer to the little table and he gets Alice's misplaced pistol first. He turns, gun raised and even with Alice's head, dark eyes filled with a deadly promise that makes Dolores' belly curdle.

"We can still make it out of here," he says, voice deceptively soft. It's the same voice that had taught Dolores how to dislocate an opponent's shoulder, the same one that had whispered _but he grew old, this knight so bold, and o'er his heart a shadow_ on a cold winter evening when she'd discovered an old book of poetry. "If you come with me, we could have everything we've ever wanted."

"Daddy?"

"It's alright, Dollie. Everything's going to be alright once we get our money."

"Is that how you thought all my dreams were gonna come true," Alice asks. Matt starts forward, trying to surprise Spence, but he stops short when the pistol's barrel is pressed against his forehead.

"I'd rather not shoot you, Matt. I'll need all the bullets I can get to make it out of here." Matt steps back, closer to the steps where Rain has collapsed. Dolores' fingers ache where she's gripping the railing, the metal biting into her palms. "So, what about it, Alice? Wanna be rich or do you wanna die down here like everyone else has?"

"I'm not like you, Spence. I was trying to shut this place down and you're trying to betray your entire country." Spence scoffs, shaking his head in sharp, little movements.

"You really believe that, don't you? That someone like Matt or his sister could take on a massive corporation like Umbrella and come out on top? Umbrella would bury them in lawsuits or just kill them right out. The story never would have broken and Umbrella would continue with their research."

"Where's the antivirus," Rain asks, voice faint. She doesn't have much longer, maybe an hour at the most.

"On the train where you found me. I would have made it if that bitch of a computer didn't have defense systems outside of the Hive." Behind Spence, closer to one of the steel tables, bubbles pop and then a woman is breaking the water's surface with a slow grace none of the other undead possess. It's the same one they'd seen an hour and a half ago, turned yellow by awful lighting and brackish water.

"I'm gonna regret this," Dolores mutters. She's moving before anyone can stop her, propelling herself over the railing and into the water. It stings her eyes and goes up her nose, but she's a fast swimmer and she manages to shoulder the scientist away from Spence. Everything else seems to happen like dominoes falling; gunfire putting the scientist down, a hand pulling her out of the water, the freezing air of the hallway as they turn to look at the remnants of their team.

"I'm missing you already," Spence murmurs. He slams the door shut, locking it and then shooting the locking mechanism to prevent the others from getting out. It's not a long walk from the labs to Loading Bay B where the train is waiting on them. Dolores stumbles in her haste to keep up, Spence's hold on her wrist bruisingly tight.

"Wait," she calls, digging her heels in. He stops just short of the train, looking over at her with furrowed brows. She drops her voice to a whisper, the fine hairs on her arms standing on end. "Something's in here, something bad." Spence looks around as well, tightening his grip on her wrist and the pistol. She looks around, eyes catching on a faint shadow overhead. There are fans set high up in the roof, casting shadows over the concrete in slow-moving circles, but one of them is warped. "Do you see it?" Spence follows her gaze, backing up toward a stack of white bins.

"Stay behind me, Dollie." The shadow moves at a deliberate pace, drawn out of its hiding place by their voices and Dolores' erratic breaths. The thing that creeps out of the fan is inhuman, a mess of wet muscles and a long tongue that whips against the concrete and long claws that leave divots behind. It leaps down and Dolores is moving without thinking again, shoving Spence behind her to take the brunt of the attack. "Dollie!" The creature lands on her with a roar, slicing through the meat of her arm while its teeth tear a chunk out of her shoulder. She can't hold back her scream, though she doesn't feel the pain, kicking her feet against the creature's belly until a bullet rips through its cheek. The creature draws back with a low growl, scratching the concrete like a dog trying to mark its territory.

"Stay away from us," Dolores screams, kicking her way to her feet again. "Stay back!" Another bullet connects with its midsection, forcing it another few feet away. It's enough that Spence can pick her up, but the creature stays between them and the train. "It'll kill you before you make it to the virus."

"I know."

_Dolores is lying in bed, staring down at the patterns that the low sun casts through her lace curtains. This is her favorite part of the day, watching the sun lower and turn the sky into a riot of colors that paint her face like a mural. She thinks she'll paint this one day or maybe tattoo it over her arms._ _She doesn't look away from the sight when her bedroom door opens, not even when Spence turns her gently onto her belly. This is a regular thing, a check-up to make sure her systems are working like they're supposed to. She's due for an update anyway, something to do with her body temperature so that any outsiders think she's a real girl._

" _Will you read to me, Daddy?" Spence grunts behind her, but it's not a real answer as he pops open the panel at the back of her neck._

" _Why don't you recite a poem for me tonight, baby?" His voice is soft as he works, tweaking a few controls that make her vision dim and then flicker back into regular levels. "Recite our favorite poem." She doesn't nod for fear of messing up his work, but she has to think for a moment._

" _Gaily bedight, a gallant knight, in sunshine and in shadow, had journeyed long, singing a song, in search of Eldorado. But he grew old, this knight so bold, and o'er his heart a shadow fell as he found no spot of ground that looked like Eldorado." She pauses a moment, left arm spasming as he hits something wrong. "Daddy? What are you doing?"_

" _Don't worry, Dollie_. _After tonight, you'll never have to be a soldier again_."

"You did something to my programming," she rasps against his shoulder. He's carrying her down a service tunnel, taking a roundabout route that loops back to Loading Bay A where the blast doors are. "Why?"

"I just administered a new update of my own creation," he says. There's no apology in his voice, just cold facts. "All it does is disconnect you from Umbrella's servers. I guess I missed something since part of your memory card was damaged, but the rest seems to be in order. You haven't tried to kill any of us." Dolores nods her resignation, staring down at the claw marks in her forearm. Three deep gouges reveal twisted wires and brown oil, sticky where it has spilled onto her sweater and the nightgown beneath it. The puzzle is complete now, filling in the blanks about how she could have possibly known the code to that door in the beginning, the definition of halon.

"Since I'm a robot, does that mean I can start using bad words?" Spence's laugh is hoarse and musical in the dark tunnel, reverberating through his chest and into her own.

"I tell ya what, Dollie. The day the world ends is the day you can start using bad words." They make it through the blast doors with ten minutes to spare, lingering in the mansion long enough for them to change and fix her arm before heading out.

Two months later, as they watch Raccoon City get blown to bits on the nine o'clock news, Dolores looks Spence straight in the eye and says," Fuck."


	3. Found

The motorcycle glides easily past the wreckage on the highway, its motor purring softly and sunlight reflecting off neon green metal. Its rider is lithe, dressed in all black apart from a pale pink leather jacket, all of it making the rider look even smaller. In the five years since the apocalypse happened, the rider has gotten very good at drawing dead things away from the convoy.

"Hey, Dollie," a voice crackles over the walkie strapped to her hip. "Anything coming up that we should know about?"

"Nothing too worrying," Dolores replies. "I got a motel coming up. Want me to scout it?"

"No, wait for backup." Dolores nods even when she knows Claire can't see her. "Hey, you got any cigarettes left?" She does, in fact, tucked securely in a metal case inside her backpack. There's five of them altogether, each a different brand.

"Nope."

"Well, fuck." Dolores grins, pulling into the motel parking lot and cutting the engine. She leans her bike against a sturdy wall of the motel, its kickstand long since torn off by a particularly strong zombie, and pulls out the metal case of smokes. It'll be a few minutes before the convoy joins her and she may as well relax while she can.

Dolores is good at following orders, so she doesn't scout out the motel, but she _does_ scout a couple of the outlying buildings. The first building leans drunkenly to the right, the wood starting to rot despite the blazing heat since they're in fucking Arizona. Inside is picked clean, a few rats chewing on what might have been a Playboy, the remains of a toilet little more than a stump and chips of yellowed porcelain lying around it.

The next building is slightly larger, used for storage once upon a time. She grabs a couple of blankets that don't stink of mildew and a bottle of Tylenol that still has a few months before it expires. Since her update, Dolores doesn't feel pain, but humans are fragile things and they tend to run fevers at the drop of a hat. Underneath a rusted bed frame, Dolores finds a stained paperback that she shoves into her back pocket.

She makes it back to the motel just in time to glimpse a flash of sunlight on metal, the convoy cresting the hill seconds later. Dolores grins when she spots the old semi with the metal tank of fuel on its back, running over to it when it comes to a stop. The passenger's door swings open and Spence drops down, kicking up a small cloud of dust beneath his heavy biker boots.

"Hey, Dollie," he greets, ruffling her curls. "Find anything good?"

"I got a couple blankets and this." She pulls the book out and hands it off, her smile turning into a smirk as his eyes light up in excitement. "I take it that you approve?"

"I read _The Green Mile_ religiously before the apocalypse destroyed the libraries." He pulls her into a hug and presses a kiss to the top of her head, a genuine moment of warm affection that isn't triggered by impending doom. She likes it. "Have I told you how cool you are lately?" She pulls back, still smirking up at him.

"Nope."

"The coolest kid around."

"I take it she found a good book," Chase says as he comes around the truck. He's a couple inches taller than Spence with dark blond hair and a face like old leather, but his blue eyes are always shining and he brings out the best in her daddy. Spence holds up the book, an excited kid at Christmas, and Chase rolls those baby blues. "Of course."

"Don't tell me you hate Stephan King."

"I'm not his biggest fan. I prefer Louis L'Amour." Spence scoffs, but he still lets Chase reel him close by his belt loops, accepting the kiss he presses there. Dolores makes a disgusted sound at the PDA, taking a step back.

"Ugh, get a room," she groans.

"Says the girl that likes to make out with her girlfriend on top of my truck." Her smirk is back at the reminder and Chase snorts when she winks at him. "Did you see many zombies on the way here?"

"Not really. They seem to be drawn back to the cities." She shrugs and has the good sense to grind her cigarette under her boot before Claire happens to look her way. The last thing she needs is a bunch of nicotine-crazed adults coming down on her.

"Better not let anyone else see you smokin', girly."

"I'm well aware." She gives Chase's shoulder a playful punch and Spence another hug before walking away. Claire's Humvee had been the first to pull into the lot and she's usually the first one out, but she's a little slow this afternoon. Heat does that to humans, turns their legs to jelly and fries their brains.

"I fucking hate Arizona," she grouses as she slips out of the Humvee. "How well did you listen to me earlier?" She's eyeing the blankets piled up beside Dolores' bike, then her gaze slides to Dolores and there's a hard glint to them. She's in no mood for jokes today.

"I didn't go in the motel, but I _did_ check the two outbuildings. Nothing interesting, no dead things." Dolores shrugs and ignores the guilt eating away at her because of the disappointment tinging Claire's scowl. "Seriously, Claire, worst thing I saw was a rat."

"Carlos, LJ, scope it out."

"Yes, ma'am," LJ says, striding ahead with Carlos following closely behind. When they first joined up with Claire's group, those two had told a fantastical story of government conspiracy, a virus, and a woman who could do amazing things like surviving a helicopter crash. No one else had believed them until Spence and Dolores added their own story.

" _If you're a robot, then why hasn't your battery died yet," LJ had demanded._ Dolores and Spence had given him their best patronizing stare before she shrugged and said," _It's a Duracell."_ And that had been that, no more discussion about super humans or which battery to pick up in convenience stores. Truth is, Dolores doesn't know why her battery hasn't run down yet or why she was able to dive into water to save her daddy. She's not giving that horse a dental exam.

"You okay," K-Mart asks, nudging Dolores with her elbow. That gesture is usually reserved for waking her up in the mornings, but just now it only makes Dolores regret the spikes on her jacket. The metal tips aren't necessarily sharp, but it's enough to make her girlfriend suck in a sharp breath. "Jacket's cute, but totally dangerous."

"I think you just described all of me," Dolores says, smiling. "I say we find us a room in that motel, pray we don't get lice, and sleep for six hours." K-Mart lets out a soft moan, eyes closing as she tilts her head back. The sunlight makes her tanned skin look like gold, the black liner on her bottom lids standing out starkly in contrast. "You're so beautiful, Kay."

"Mm, yeah." She's grinning when she looks back to Dolores, brown eyes glinting with amusement. "You're not so bad yourself." Dolores laughs and draws K-Mart in the same way Chase had done with Spence, pressing her lips against K-Mart's. It's a nice moment, the two girls basking in each other, which is why screaming doesn't exactly surprise either of them. Nice moments are rare these days.

"I'm on it."

"Right behind you," Spence says. They move in unison, Dolores falling a step behind simply because his legs are longer. She was literally designed to fight with Spence, all her instincts equaling to years of development in some lab. They pull their pistols at the same time, moving back to back as they head down the long hall off to the right until they find Carlos and LJ. The room is musty from being shut up for so long, two corpses sprawled over the tacky carpet. LJ is lying on the bed, ashen and breathing hard with a wound at his temple.

"You look like shit."

"Oh, fuck you," he grunts, head thumping against the footboard.

"Were you bitten?"

"Nope." She could scan him easily, but doing that could bring Umbrella right down on their heads. She can't scan for infection, can't use her built-in GPS, can't even do a simple Google search because Umbrella would lock in on the signal. So, instead of scanning, she walks out of the room and begins her search for goodies.

"All clear," Carlos says over the walkie. Like the outbuildings, most of the rooms have already been picked over, but she grabs a couple of usable pillows and a heavy quilt that'll make a good tent on nights they're brave enough to camp out.

"Find anything good, Dollie," Spence asks. He's leaning in the doorway with his arms over his chest and anyone else might find it intimidating, but it's really just his way of trying to look cool. "Any more books?"

"Bedding," she says. She's got it piled up in the corner of room nine as she goes through the drawers of what used to be a dresser. She tosses the Bible aside and finds a plastic case, pink with _Roxie's Mix_ written in blue Sharpie. There's no paper inside that lists the songs on the CD, but music is music and she gladly adds it to her stash. "Maybe we'll get lucky and there'll be some Britney Spears on this."

"If I have to listen to Baby One More Time, I'm going to throw your CD player out the goddamn window."

"Don't be such a sourpuss."

The rest of the afternoon is a blur of motion; setting up the perimeter, handing out food, searching desperately for even a hint of gas. Chase's tanker, as it turns out, is nearly bone dry and soon they'll all have to use the heel-toe express if they want to get anywhere.

"I think there's a convenience store about three miles from here," Dolores says as night starts to close in around them. "I could always take my bike over there and look for some gas."

"Nah, we'll stop there in the morning," Claire says. She's looking up at the sky, but she doesn't seem to notice the stars that shine brighter than ever now that pollution is starting to fade. "It's gonna storm its ass off tonight. I'll spread the word." She gets up with a sigh, making her rounds through the camp.

"You sleepin' in the tanker," Spence asks. He's leaning against Chase, one of the cowboy's arms wrapped around him. Dolores loves seeing her dad like this, all gooey and soft like a melted Snickers bar, perfectly happy despite the tens of thousands of dead dudes roaming around. Alice probably would have laughed her ass off to see the so-called Umbrella Badass in puppy-eyed love.

"Nah, the Humvee's got more room."

"And that's where K-Mart is sleeping," Chase says with another of his bright-eyed smiles. She's only known the man for two years, but she loves him. She'd have to commit mass murder if something happened to him.

"Another good reason to stay in the Humvee."

"I'm an excellent cuddler," K-Mart confirms. "And I give her cheek kisses to wake her up in the morning so she isn't grumpy."

"I remember when she was little and absolutely refused to get out of bed unless I sang her a song," Spence says, nostalgia making his words soft. "It always had to be the exact same one, every morning until I thought it would drive me batty. You remember it, Dollie?"

"Uh-huh," she nods. _"Through sunshine and shadow, from darkness till noon, over mountains that reach from the sky to the moon, a man with a dream that will never let go keeps searching to find Eldorado. So ride, boldly ride, to the end of the rainbow. Ride, boldly ride, till you find Eldorado."_

 _"The wind becomes bitter, the sky turns to grey. His body grows weary, he can't find his way, but he'll never turn back, though he's lost in the snow, for he has to find Eldorado. So ride, boldly ride, to the end of the rainbow. Ride, boldly ride, till you find Eldorado."_ Their voices join together, echoing softly over the wind and the crackling of the fire. " _My Daddy once told me what a man ought to be, there's much more to life than the things we can see, and the godliest mortal you ever will know is the one with the dream of Eldorado. So ride, boldly ride, to the end of the rainbow. Ride, boldly ride, till you find Eldorado."_

"I love that song," Dolores sighs, resting her head on K-Mart's shoulder. "You used to recite the poem it's based off of while you ran updates on me." She remembers a night outlined in bright green and silver, the dark silhouette of her father as he worked on an update that would free her from Umbrella's servers. She wonders if he ever regrets that.

"Speaking of, you're due for an update. Ride with me and Chase tomorrow and I'll do it on the way to that convenience store. Maybe this time your vision will stop flickering to green."

"That'd be nice." Green is a comforting color for her, but she'd rather not have it coloring everything for hours on end. The first time it happened last month she'd laughed until her ribs ached because it made her daddy look like The Hulk.

The wind picks up after that and they're all forced to retire for the night, K-Mart and Dolores curling up together in the backseat of Claire's Humvee. Dolores lies there for a long while before eventually giving up the losing battle, sleep drawing her down into a deep well of memory. She dreams of a flooded lab that night, fear pulsing bright behind her eyes and a supercomputer promising death. She gets a grand total of seven hours of sleep, two of those uninterrupted by nightmares. It's more than she usually gets and she wakes feeling like she can take on the world. Of course, that's about when she notices what's waiting for her outside and she decides she'd rather not take on much of anything.

"Claire," she whispers. The other woman doesn't respond, so Dolores sits up slowly and carefully, and nudges her shoulder. "Claire." Her eyes flutter open, totally unaware for a split second before snapping out of dreamland. "This doesn't look good."

"No, it does not." Surrounding the convoy on all sides, perched on the vehicles with dead, hungry eyes, are crows. Hundreds of crows looking for the barest hint of a meal. Fucking _zombie crows_. What even is her life right now? Claire brings her walkie up, moving slow to avoid catching the birds' attention. "Carlos?"

"I see them," he confirms. "Everybody stay in your trucks."

"Roll up your windows and keep quiet." Dolores nudges K-Mart awake, regret twisting in her belly at the way her girlfriend has to claw her way out of a peaceful slumber. It's not fair that they can't catch a break these days.

"Oh, God," K-Mart gasps. "What's wrong with their eyes?" One of the crows alights on the Humvee's hood, white crust circling its eyes with a blue film covering them. It's a familiar sight after five years, though it's usually found on humans. "Do you think they're infected?"

"The disease is protean," Dolores says, echoing a memory. She isn't underground anymore, but the claustrophobia wraps around her like an old friend as she looks into those dead eyes. "It changes from liquid to airborne to blood transmission depending on its environment." A crow starts a hoarse caw and the others rally around it, soaring up into the air and then diving down toward the convoy. "Oh, fuck."

"We're moving," Claire says over the walkie. Her Humvee comes to life with a roar and the other vehicles echo the sound, circling to get out of the lot before the crows can cause any real damage. They're almost to the highway again when they hear crunching metal, Claire slamming on the brakes hard enough that Dolores flies into the front seat and smacks her head against the dash.

"Good thing I'm not human." She's still a little slow in sitting up, her vision flicking to bright green and then back to normal. "I don't think you guys could survive this much head trauma."

"You're probably right." Claire spins the wheel, heading back toward the lot and the bus that crashed into a light post. The front grate and hood are damaged, but it's the windshield that makes Dolores nervous, beginning to buckle under the weight of the birds. "Dollie, you wanna volunteer?"

"On it." She jumps out of the car and slams the door behind her, matching Carlos' pace as they head for the bus. "Stick close and try not to get bitten."

"That could be the title of my memoir," he snorts.

"Your memoir could spawn a host of sequels at this point." Her grin is bone dry as she draws her pistol, providing cover while he evacs the bus. She thanks God for the sheet metal they keep on-hand, watching as Carlos slides it across the back bumper of the bus and into the back of Mikey's news van. "Kids first! Let's go!" The flow of traffic doesn't change when one of the women falls and not one of them tries to stop the birds from swooping down on her. It's important to keep as many people alive as they can and sometimes that means relying on the old adage _the good of the many outweigh the good of the few_. They all hate it, but there's nothing to be done.

"It's full," Betty shouts. "Go, Mikey!" Mikey gives a sharp nod and sprints for the front seat, sliding in and beginning to drive even before the back doors have been shut. "LJ, let's go!" LJ grabs the little girl that Betty shoves at him and jumps into the back of Mikey's van while Dolores sprints for the Humvee where K-Mart is waiting. "Dollie, there's a kid!" Dolores turns right as Carlos wraps a teen up in his arms, doing his best to shield her as the flamethrower atop the bus spins out of control. Dolores wants to run and tackle them both out of the way, but comes to a stuttering stop when the flames arch away from the pair, an impossibility of epic proportions that Dolores is more than grateful for.

"What in the hell," she breathes. The fire blows upward, whipping around to catch the crows and drive a few of them away. It does another long strike in the air and then it turns into black smoke, drifting on a faint breeze away from the camp. Dolores looks away from the smoke, gaze landing on a woman not too far away. She's tall and willowy, blonde hair cut short so that it curls around her ears and khaki outfit looking like something out of a bad porno. _Blatant terror filling Alice's face as the Queen of Hearts shrieks (off with her head), Alice with the hard blue eyes and even harder smile as she remembers (blue for the virus, green for the antivirus)_.

Dolores has to remind herself that she isn't underground, that an undead horde isn't trying to beat its way through a steel door to rip her apart. The suits are dead, but her and Alice and Daddy are still here, they'll always be here because they have to pay for their sins. Instead of saying all of this, she musters every inch of her usual sarcasm and settles on something a little lighter.

"So, you still let random kids claim you as their mom or have you outgrown that?"


	4. Flight

They pass the next forty-eight hours in peace, no rushing or running for their lives, just peace. Dolores passes it on the motel's sagging roof, head pillowed on her arms and eyes closed as she remembers what heat feels like. She thinks of summer afternoons spent in a garden, the smell of gardenias filling the air and bright sunshine falling over her face like a veil.

"Do you remember what we used to do in the summer?" She doesn't open her eyes, but she hums her acknowledgement. There's the shuffle of footsteps and then Alice is sitting down beside her, bringing Dolores' head up to rest on her lap as she cards her fingers gently through wild curls. "It's one of the few times we actually spent together that wasn't training."

"I loved those afternoons, the smell of the flowers and your perfume." Alice laughs at that and the sound is rusty, like she hasn't done it in too long. "Daddy would be nearby, complaining about the heat."

"But he always recited that dumb poem whenever you asked." Dolores is the one to laugh this time, deep and wonderfully freeing. She doesn't laugh like she used to, but neither does anyone else. "How…. How did you grow up? Not even Umbrella's tech is capable of natural aging like this."

_It's late February in Arizona and rain is thundering against the earth like it's trying to claw its way into the underground compound. Dolores wakes with a hum to find a green-lit room that isn't quite right, the air a little too still. She doesn't move at first, eyes darting around to take in the familiar sight of a bedroom that shouldn't be here._

" _How are you feeling, Dolores?" The voice speaks with a British accent, but it belongs to a man rather than a Queen. Her head snaps in that direction and the bedroom disappears, replaced by a sterile lab that is mercifully free of water. The man that spoke is sitting beside the hospital bed she's been strapped to, resting comfortably in an office chair complete with wheels._

" _Weird." Her eyes widen at the voice echoing from her throat, unfamiliar and…. Older. She sounds older, but that's not possible since she's designed to be an eight year old forever. "Why do I sound like that? What did you do to me?" The man smiles and it's not a comforting thing, like sharp rocks at the bottom of a cliff that she's been hurled off of._

" _I've given you a slight upgrade. Follow my finger." She does so, brown eyes flicking to the left, then right and back to center before settling on the man's face. It's lined, the face of a middle-aged bureaucrat with hard blue eyes and blond hair that he's brushed off to the side. "Give me the coordinates of the Great Pyramid of Giza."_

" _29.9792° N, 31.1342° E." She didn't even have to stop and think about it, the knowledge was sitting on the tip of her tongue like it was waiting on that very question. She wouldn't have known it yesterday. The man looks pleased with her answer, scribbling something down in a notepad._

" _Very good, dear. Now, tell me what happened in the Hive." So she does, she tells him every gritty detail that she can remember complete with her running commentary. He doesn't look pleased with the colorful embellishments, but he nods all the same. When she's done, he rises from his chair._

" _Wait!" He pauses, looking down at her over his shoulder. "Where am I?"_

" _An Umbrella lab."_

" _No shit. Am I still in Arizona? What day is it?" There's an amused sort of pity in his gaze that she hates, fingers curling against her palms with the urge to claw those eyes out of his head._

" _You are indeed still in Arizona and you have been here a week." He pats her cheek with a condescending smile and then heads for the door, pausing there long enough to throw another glance her way. "Get some rest, Dolores. We've a lot of tests to do tomorrow."_

She tells this to Alice with a carefully maintained indifference, remembering foreign hands playing in her mind, twisting wires until she didn't even feel like herself anymore. Spence had undone most of that, but sometimes she'll look in the mirror at her new face and there'll be a moment where she'll wonder who the hell she really is.

"I know how that feels," Alice murmurs. "They like playing around in our heads to get results." The hardness there is different than before, more like necessity to save face rather than a stone cold badass. Spence has grown softer and Alice has grown harder and Dolores is firmly stuck in the middle.

"I read part of your file, you know." Alice's brows meet her hairline and Dolores is amused to note that they're still carefully plucked. "I didn't get all of it and Isaacs shoved me into the Hive simulation for three days as punishment, but I read about what happened at the manor. I'm sorry they took Matt."

"Do you know what they did to him?" Dolores shakes her head and it's Alice's turn to take a stroll down memory lane, only this lane has mines hidden under the hard-packed earth and the flowers at its edges are poisonous. She tells about waking up in a lab, fleeing through a city in search of a little girl, killing the thing that had once been Matt, and a helicopter crash that should have killed them all. When she's done, the hardness has morphed into exhaustion.

"Don't tell that story to Spence," Dolores says, going for lightness again. "It might make him jealous. The most badass thing he's done lately is use shampoo as lube." Alice snorts out a surprised laugh so genuinely dorky that Dolores laughs, too. "It didn't end well if you're curious. Chase couldn't look anyone in the eye for a week and Claire was pissed that she had greasy hair until we found a stockpile in a Dollar Tree."

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Speaking of Spence, I'm surprised you haven't tried to kill him yet." Dolores hasn't forgotten the expression of betrayal twisting Alice's face as a metal door slammed shut. She dreams about it sometimes, how things might have been different if she'd been a little bigger, a little more independent, and had flung the door open to get the others out.

"He's got a black eye because I have awesome restraint."

"And Chase?"

"He laughed." It's said so matter-of-factly that Dolores doesn't question it. If anyone here would laugh about their partner getting decked by a skinny little badass, it would be Chase. The man's seriously lacking in entertainment. "LJ asked for my autograph."

"Yeah, he really misses WWE."

"What do you miss?"

"My fucking teddy bear." It's not even an exaggeration, that teddy bear was her safety blanket before her upgrade, a constant companion until Suit One trampled it on that last trip into the Hive. She loved that stupid thing. There's a lapse in conversation after that, broken only by the sound of people milling around below them. "So," Dolores says after a while," Alaska."

"Alaska."

But before Alaska comes Vegas and Dolores is hoping the zombies have cleared out by now. The convoy has been avoiding cities as much as possible, but that doesn't mean that Dolores hasn't seen them. Right after the apocalypse was a real thing, Dolores had seen what a group of zombies could do to cities. She had been hiding in Oklahoma on the way to the desert, she and Spence had stopped in some fancy, supposedly haunted hotel in OKC, and they had watched from the roof as a taxi was rolled onto its side and its passengers yanked out. The driver had been killed quickly, but his passenger wasn't as lucky, the zombies started on her legs and managed to avoid nicking her femoral artery.

It had been late May and the skies were gray, fat clouds threatening rain that never came as the city started to burn. The Skirvin wasn't touched by the fires, standing tall and proud amongst the rubble littering the streets. Spence had held her close, keeping them both out of sight of anyone wandering down Park Avenue. They stayed in the hotel for a month, stocking up on bed linens, forgotten clothes and food before piling into that overturned taxi.

Fourteen hours later had them in Arizona, stumbling into an Umbrella trap that kept them underground for nearly a year. When they finally escaped, they'd avoided people altogether until Carlos and LJ found them and led them back to Claire's group. There had been fifty people back then, now there's less than thirty. Dolores stares down at the people milling around and then up to the sky, almost surprised when she finds a wide expanse of blue instead of gray clouds. Dolores and Spence rarely talk about the time they spent in Oklahoma and they never talk about the year underground.

"Are you okay, Dollie?" Alice's eyes have grown soft with concern and it reminds her of those days when training sessions turned rough. Beyond her, back on the ground, K-Mart is giving the signal to bug out.

"I'm fine," she mumbles. "It's time to go."

K-Mart rides pillion on Dolores' bike, arms tight around her waist and chin on her shoulder. She doesn't wear a helmet and she likes to press butterfly-soft kisses along Dolores' neck whenever they take sharp turns out of the Mohave Valley. They take US-95 North the whole way, having to hit the ditches a few times to get around traffic jams, but the eighty-nine miles pass without much incident.

Two and a half hours later, Dolores is leaning her battered motorcycle against a knock-off Eiffel Tower. Las Vegas, much like Oklahoma City, is a ruined wasteland in year five. Massive sandstorms have buried most of the landmarks, even the Statue of Liberty has panels missing by now. It's like a kick to a gut, seeing famous landmarks and towns so empty; no hordes or mobs or goofy tourists, just sand and the occasional blood splatter.

 _Imhotep could have a field day in this place_ , she thinks in sad amusement.

"Anyone feel up to a heist," she asks, nodding toward the MGM Grand. "I'll bet Mister Benedict has gone somewhere safer for the summer." Alice and Spence both share a commiserating groan and Dolores gives them a shit-eating grin in return. It's their own fault she'd gotten obsessed with Ocean's Eleven.

"Cut the shit," Claire orders, voice stern. "We gotta move this container if we want any gas." She points at a big, metal shipping container that's been set right in the middle of what had been the road, blocking the way they need to go. Dolores moves closer to it, noting the sturdy metal rings at each of the top four corners.

"Stop." Her tone brooks no arguments and the convoy listens on instinct. That tone, no matter who's using it, is the difference between life or death. "Everyone back away from the ugly box." They do so, but only Spence seems to realize what she has.

"You don't seriously think," he starts, but cuts himself off.

"That's exactly what I think. Umbrella knows we're here and desperate." She takes a hesitant step forward, ignoring the way Spence and K-Mart both reach for her. "If they know where we are, then I might as well do a scan." She glances back over her shoulder in time to catch Spence's hardened expression. "Better safe than sorry."

"Do it." She nods and turns back to the container. Her vision flickers green again, this time intentional as she scans the container. The metal is thin, held together by expert welding and some bolts, the inside holding a full gang of the undead that are bigger than any of the others Dolores has seen. "Carlos, you still got that grenade on you? The one you stole from that tank back in Arizona?"

"Sure do," Carlos nods.

"Use it." They all rush back to their cars, backing them up as far as they can in the dunes. Carlos waits for a moment afterward, making sure the others are safe before he pulls the pin and lobs the grenade at the container. He's moving before it lands, diving under the Eiffel Tower just as the container's door opens. The door lands on top of the grenade, turning into shrapnel as the grenade goes off.

The container is blown sky high, coming back down in jagged pieces that smoke even as they're buried in the sand. The undead follow suit, bloodied arms and legs and part of a torso raining over the desert. They wait a moment longer, making sure there's nothing else waiting on them before coming out of cover.

"We seriously need more grenades," Carlos says.

"Maybe we should raid an army base and find some," Chase agrees. Dolores says nothing, looking around for any sign of an Umbrella team. They wouldn't have just dropped off a load of their undead without being nearby to supervise. "What is it, Dollie?"

"They're close," Alice says. "There." She's pointing to one of the few buildings still standing and Dolores can vaguely make out the blades of a helicopter from where she's standing. "Spence, you remember that mission we went on in Budapest?" Spence laughs at that, looking too smug for words.

"You killed a dude with your thighs," he muses. "I got thrown off a roof. It was a good time."

"Wanna do it again?"

"Hell yeah. Chase, watch Dollie for me." They take off before the others have a chance to follow, heading straight for the building and climbing inside through a broken window. There's a sound of gunfire a few minutes later, then Spence is thrown off the roof and a helicopter is taking off.

"You think he's dead," Chase asks. Spence pops up out of a dune, giving everyone a thumbs-up. "You know, he's the luckiest bastard I've ever met."

"He gets thrown off roofs a lot," Dolores says. "Hasn't broken a bone from that yet, but he stubbed his toe on an end table and broke the damn thing. He's so weird."

"So fucking weird. Let's go get him." She and Chase move away from the group, careful to avoid the lamp posts sticking out of the sand. Spence is still sitting when they reach him, looking content to stay right where he is. This close, Dolores can see a hole ripped in his shirt, blood pooling and sticking to him, creating a muddy mess where he'd landed.

"I got shot," he says, smiling dumbly.

"I see that, dear. Why don't you hold still while I look at it?"

"Adrenaline is a hell of a drug, Chase. If I didn't have that going for me, I'd be crying like a baby. Ow, fuck!" Chase and Dolores share an amused look, but it's cut short by screaming and gunshots back the way they'd come. Dolores takes off, making it back in time to find LJ lying dead in the sand and Carlos propped up against the Humvee's tire with a bite mark on his arm.

"What the fuck happened," she demands.

"LJ must have been bitten back at the motel," Carlos says. "He turned." There's dawning horror in his gaze as he looks at the bite mark, torn flesh leaving an imperfect impression of LJ's teeth. She wants to ask what else could possibly go wrong, to scream at the heavens, but she's watched enough movies to know that will only backfire.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick, her life sucks.

The compound turns out to be back in Arizona, the very same one Spence and Dolores had escaped from with a few minor changes. Minor change A is the helicopter while minor change B is the hundreds of undead pressing against the chain link fence like Julia Roberts and Richard Gere are recreating Pretty Woman on the other side.

"Something tells me getting in there isn't going to be easy," Carlos says.

"Something tells me you're right," Alice mumbles. She's peering down at the compound using the specialized binoculars Carlos had found with the grenade, handing them off to Claire a moment later.

"Actually, I have an idea. Chase, are you attached to that tanker?" Chase squints at the truck and then back to Carlos, realization setting in. It's another kick to the gut, all this loss never seeming to numb Dolores enough. She doesn't have adrenaline and she doesn't feel physical pain, but that's nothing compared to the emotional trauma they've all been through.

"You're not gonna kill yourself. They have the antivirus in there."

"We both know it's too late for that. Besides, I'd rather go out doing something heroically stupid. Feel like a badass one more time."

"I'll go with him," Dolores says. "If he survives the crash, I'll drag his ass inside so you guys can vaccinate him." He scowls but doesn't argue, simply giving in with a nod. They all head back to the others waiting a mile away, the cars safely out of sight of the compound.

"Be careful, Dollie," Spence says, pulling her into a hug. "Try to come back in one piece this time. Reattaching limbs is a pain in the ass." She laughs and squeezes his middle, then she pulls away to look up at him. Spence is still an asshole of epic proportions, but he's her daddy and she loves him. "Don't die in there, okay? We don't get enough lightning around here for me to pull a Frankenstein and bring you back."

"You got it." She shares a look with Chase, nodding toward Spence and then K-Mart. Chase nods, then cuts his gaze to Carlos. The message is clear and Dolores hopes that Carlos really does survive the crash and the bite. She's grown fond of the idiot and she'd hate to lose him so soon after losing LJ.

"Let's get this show on the road, Dollie," Carlos calls. She grabs the pilfered CD from the motel and climbs into the front seat. "What's on that?"

"No fucking clue. I haven't played it yet."

"Well, now's as good a time as any." The engine fires up with a roar and Carlos steers it back onto the road facing the compound. Dolores slides the CD in and presses play, letting out an excited whoop as the truck picks up speed and Aqua blares out of the speakers.

"I bet you never thought you'd be mowing down zombies while listening to Barbie Girl." Carlos' smile is a grim thing, but there's a trace of amusement in his eyes.

The zombies move toward the tanker when they hear the noise, the heavy tires and metal plate welded to the front doing a pretty good job of decimating them. They're nearly to the fence when the truck tips onto its side, plowing through zombies and chain link with a high-pitched squeal of metal on asphalt.

"Oh, son of a bitch. That one hurt." Dolores groans her agreement, picking shards of glass out of her arm. "Did we get the fence?" They both struggle upright just to be sure, ignoring the undead hands clawing at the busted metal mesh covering the truck's windows. "We got it."

"Teamwork makes the dream work. Now, how the hell are we supposed to get out? I was kind of hoping the truck would be right side up when we gatecrashed." A thunderous _boom_ makes the truck shake and sends the pair back against the passenger door. "Goddammit." The horde begins to move away, following the rhythmic booms coming from somewhere on the right. Once the dead have passed, the driver's side door is wrenched open and a familiar arm is reaching inside to grab Carlos' shirt.

"Come on, Oliveira, we don't have all day," Spence snaps. Carlos and Dolores scramble out of the overturned truck with Spence's help, finding the source of the booms. Mikey is sprinting away from all of them, lighting stick after stick of dynamite to draw the crowd away. "Dollie, get to the helicopter!"

"Carlos, let's move," Alice yells, closer to the compound's door.

"Be careful, old man," Dolores whispers, pulling Carlos in for one last hug. He laughs into her curls, pressing a kiss there before pulling back. Spence picks her up over his shoulder when they pull apart, sprinting for the helicopter. It's a tight fit and Dolores ends up in K-Mart's lap, but a feeling of safety washes over her as they lift off the ground. Below them, turned into dark specs, Alice and Carlos barrel into the compound.

 _Give 'em hell, you two_.


	5. Falsified

Dolores is eight years old and she is asleep. She knows this, every part of her screaming to wake up, but the dream holds her deep and she really doesn't want to fight it too hard. In her dream sunlight is warm on her face and her teddy bear is settled snugly against her chest.

It's a Sunday and that means no training, so the Parks family is out in the gardens. The apple trees are thriving and Spence laughs as Alice climbs along the branch of one to free Dolores' kite from where it had gotten stuck. Well, she's trying to climb, but the branch is wobbling and she's holding on for dear life.

"Be careful, Mama," Dolores calls.

"Yeah, I don't feel like playing doctor," Spence adds. Alice's laugh is weak as she stretches out over the branch, fingertips grazing one edge of the kite. "Come on, Alice! You got this." The look Alice sends his way suggests where he can shove his encouragement. "I think I'm annoying her, Dollie."

"That's not news." Alice's laugh this time is deep and musical, the perfect laugh from cheesy movies. It makes Spence squawk, then he's sweeping Dolores up in his arms to tickle her.

She knows this is a dream, but it's so much better than reality.

_The waves crash against the beach and over Dolores' bare feet, leaving white suds behind. Dolores can't hold her laugh in for long and she grins over at Spence and Chase and K-Mart because none of them have been to a beach in years._

"Have you ever had champagne that tastes so good?" It's another dream, another slice of life fantasy that will never come true. Again, Dolores doesn't fight it too hard because the bed under her is soft and her wife is warm. They're both older in this dream, late twenties and so human it hurts. K-Mart is balanced over Dolores on one elbow, her free hand holding a champagne flute.

"It's really nice," Dolores agrees. She can taste it on K-Mart's lips, a little fizzy so that it tickles her nose when she actually gets a drink of it. "Chase has good taste in booze."

"Chase has good taste in everything. I mean, look at this suite." K-Mart sets the flute aside and rolls onto her back, both of them staring around the suite in wonder. All the furniture is made up of wood that reflects the light flooding in from the opened windows, the little coffee table's top made up of a mosaic of colorful sea glass to form K-Mart and Dolores' likeness.

"Only the finest things in life for his daughters." Dolores laughs, drunk on expensive champagne and a life she never wants to leave. "And think, this is just the boat ride to our real honeymoon. Our hotel must be amazing." K-Mart hums her agreement, rolling onto her side again to snuggle up with Dolores.

"We could go swimming, you know. I hear Hawaii has really awesome beaches." But Dolores doesn't want to talk about beaches, so she presses her lips to K-Mart's and kisses her until they're both out of breath. "Then again, who says we're leaving our hotel room?"

"Maybe to eat or sight-see."

"Only maybe?"

"A slight chance." Dolores nods and smiles, carding her fingers through K-Mart's golden hair. It's long and glossy like something out of a magazine, healthy instead of growing brittle. They aren't malnourished here, they're safe and loved and so free that Dolores sometimes feels like a sparrow. "We don't have to wear bras if we stay in our room."

"That's a damn good point, Dollie. I may just see if we can make monthly payments and stay there forever." Even as she says this, the dream begins to waver. Dolores pulls K-Mart tight against her, trying to make her stay, but it does no good.

_Boats crash against the sand much like the waves had done, then men in black gear storm the beach. Dolores tries to fight, she tries so hard to keep those men away from her family, but it's not enough. It's never been enough._

"I don't understand," Kaplan says, face going green. "What were those things? What happened to all the people that worked here?" This dream feels too close to reality, a playback that means someone is accessing Dolores' memory card. She tries to fight, but she's stuck.

"They died," Spence answers," and then they decided they didn't like that situation and rallied the troops. Living dead come back for some kind of showdown." He slides down the wall beside Dolores, thumping his head against it and closing his eyes. "Or maybe it's Judgement Day. Either way, we're massively fucked."

"I didn't sign up for this," Dolores complains. "I know my rights, no contract signed by a minor is considered legally binding." Spence raises his brows and she shrugs. "What? I watched a lot of Law and Order when you and Alice were playing tonsil hockey." He snorts, reaching out to pat down her curls.

"Did any of those episodes tell you how to get us out of this situation?"

"Nope." Outside the door leading to the labs, the undead horde growl and moan. There are thumps of palms smacking against metal, occasional squelches and the screech of fingernails.

_Something collides with her head and her systems go haywire as she drops to the ground. The wet sand cushions her fall, but it's scratchy against her cheek and she can't move her hand to wipe it off her cheek. It just lies beside her, heavy as a lead weight._

" _Forget the woman," a man commands, distinctly American. "Get the rest of them onto the ship."_

" _What about the robot, Mister Wesker?" There's a long pause where black boots come to a stop in front of Dolores' head. She wants to spit on them, but all she can do is look at her reflection in the polished leather toes. Her curls have come loose from the bun she'd put it up in that morning, rising and falling with each gust of wind._

" _She might be useful. If nothing else, we can use her for parts."_

"Do you know what today is," K-Mart asks, smiling brightly. She's in a pair of sleeping shorts and one of Dolores' shirts, excitement practically bubbling out of her. Dolores smiles at the sight, deciding to play ignorant. She shakes her head and K-Mart playfully shoves her shoulder. "It's our fifth anniversary!"

"No, no, I distinctly remember us getting together in April."

"Maybe we should have Spence take a look at your memory card." K-Mart draws Dolores closer with two fingers in the belt loops of her jeans, kissing her soundly and thoroughly. Dolores leans into the kiss, fingers tangling in K-Mart's hair to keep her close. If she can keep her close, then maybe this dream won't melt. "We got together in October."

"Hmm, five whole years since that fateful Halloween. Remember how we spent it?"

"How could I forget? We took the kids trick r' treating around the convoy and then we had to shove them all into Mikey's van because a horde came stumbling after us." K-Mart laughs despite the blood tinging the memory. Before the zombies, they were all laughing and handing out half-metled Snickers bars they'd found in the remains of a Party Galaxy.

"After we got to safety, we stayed up for hours just watching the stars. The moon was so _big_ that night and you pointed out the constellations." K-Mart sighs softly, already growing soft around the edges in spite of how hard Dolores is clinging to her. Far too soon, K-Mart is replaced by nothingness, by sterile air that stings her nose.

" _Do you think she realizes what we're doing?"_

" _What does it matter? She's Umbrella property and she needs to be managed. Jesus, look at all the frayed wires."_

"You have to be careful, Dollie," Spence mutters, fingers hard at work in her arm. The panel has come loose and the wires inside it are starting to fray at the edges. By this time next year, she's going to be held together by electrical tape and hope. "I realize you don't feel the pain anymore, but you can't just throw yourself between LJ and danger either."

"Yes I can," she sniffs. Spence's expression hardens and she knows she's said the wrong thing. Instead of correcting the situation, she glances away from her father. Behind him and to the left, a corpse is scattered over hot asphalt, crows already picking at it. "I can't let you guys die."

"Dying is part of being human."

"We've already lost too many people." Her expression is pleading and there are impossible tears in her eyes, blurring her father's face as they fall down her cheeks. Spence wipes them away with his thumbs, leaving a smear of grease behind. "Don't you guys get tired of death?"

"Of course we do. I've already accepted it, I accepted that I would probably die young after the first mission Umbrella sent me on." Dolores' eyes drop to her boots, the spikes along the backs of them covered in old blood. "Baby doll, none of us will last forever. At the rate you're going, you might bite it before the rest of us and I'd like to avoid that."

"I don't know if I do." Spence snaps her arm panel closed and kisses her forehead. He doesn't say anything and she can see he's thinking the same thing. They all are at this point. Five years of rotting death with little life to be found takes its toll on all of them. "Maybe it would be easier if we all laid down one night and never woke up again." Spence's lips twitch up in something like amusement.

"When have the Parks family ever made things easy?"

 _The helicopter touches down, the blades whipping sand up like a tornado until Claire powers them down. Dolores is the first one out, wriggling until she gets her legs free from the tangled mess of her friends. Her boots hit the sand with a soft sound_.

" _This is so cool," she gushes, kicking off her boots and socks. "Let's go swimming!"_

" _How the hell can you swim," Chase asks. "You're a robot." She shrugs, unable to answer that question since she doesn't even have the answer. She's a robot, but her battery seems to be self-sustaining and her outer layer protects all her insides from water. She's said it before and she'll say it again: certain horses don't need a teeth cleaning._

" _Who cares? I haven't been swimming since that creepy hotel in OKC and I think I've earned an hour of fun." The waves crash against the beach and over Dolores' bare feet, leaving white suds behind. She can't hold her laugh in for long and she grins over at Spence and Chase and K-Mart because none of them have been to a beach in years. "I think it's cold." K-Mart loses her boots and steps up beside Dolores, taking her hand._

" _It's cold," she confirms. She wiggles her toes and digs them into the wet sand, giggling like a little kid locked in a toy store. Dolores has never heard that sound and she cherishes it, stores it away for some later time. "I wonder if we can find some seashells. Oh, or sea glass! My mom used to make mosaics out of that stuff all the time."_

" _My mom used to collect kites," Spence says. "We'd always bring them to the beach and hope the wind wouldn't carry them out of our hands. She used to laugh whenever we fell into the waves and the kite fluttered high above us." He's smiling and his shoulders have relaxed, perfectly at ease for the first time in five years._

" _Parents are weird."_

" _Oh, yeah," Dolores agrees. "Daddy got to where he couldn't sleep unless he recited that Poe poem at least once. I still hear him most nights." She grins over at him and notices a faint crease between his brows, those broad shoulders tensing again. "What is it?"_

" _Boats," he says. Dolores turns to look out at the water again and, sure enough, the small fleet of boats is coming right for them. Dolores thinks they might be a rescue, part of the Arcadia compound maybe. When they get closer, she can see the Umbrella logo on their helmets and knows better._ " _Run!_ _Get back! Hurry!"_ _Boats crash against the sand much like the waves had done, then men in black gear storm the beach. Dolores tries to fight, she tries so hard to keep those men away from her family, but it's not enough. It's never been enough._

_Something collides with her head and her systems go haywire as she drops to the ground. The wet sand cushions her fall, but it's scratchy against her cheek and she can't move her hand to wipe it off her cheek. It just lies beside her, heavy as a lead weight._

" _Forget the woman," a man commands, distinctly American. "Get the rest of them onto the ship."_

" _What about the robot, Mister Wesker?" There's a long pause where black boots come to a stop in front of Dolores' head. She wants to spit on them, but all she can do is look at her reflection in the polished leather toes. Her curls have come loose from the bun she'd put it up in that morning, rising and falling with each gust of wind._

" _She might be useful. If nothing else, we can use her for parts."_

Dolores' eyes flutter open and she wonders at first what this dream will be. She hopes it's a good one that lingers, one with sunshine and flowers and a giggle that reminds her of bells. A head pops into her line of vision, a man with untrusting blue eyes and dark hair shaved close to his head.

"You look like shit," she says. The man seems taken aback, but she doesn't care about his emotions because she can hear that giggle, weak as it is. Dolores shoves the man out of the way after she sits up on the steel table, finding K-Mart just a few feet away. "You look better than this guy, Kay."

"I'm going for the full-on Disney Princess look," K-Mart says. She's leaning heavily against Claire, long hair free of its usual ponytail and much longer than it had been. Dolores wonders how long they've been in stasis. "Can you help me to her, Claire? I know you need to help Alice."

"I've got her," Chase says. He's weak, too, pale instead of tan with dark bruises under his eyes. "You go on." Claire gives a curt nod, then her and her lookalike are striding away amidst the glass tubes. Now that she's really looking around, there are _a lot_ of glass tubes, like a giant's science kit with people as its experiment.

"You've aged a little." K-Mart settles down beside her on the table, barely noticing as Chase takes off in search of Spence. "Maybe a year." K-Mart's fingers are warm on Dolores' cheek, tracing the curve down to her lips. "You're beautiful." Dolores hums, wrapping K-Mart up in her arms and kissing her like they'd done in that dream on the boat. She doesn't want to pull away for fear of this melting like all the other dreams, but K-Mart is still solid in her arms when she opens her eyes again.

It's the sound of gunshots that break the spell, screaming and thumping bodies that's become the fucking soundtrack of the apocalypse. If Dolores is being honest, she'd prefer a nice pop mix, heavy on Britney with a splash of Nirvana.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," Dolores sighs, resignation settling heavily around her shoulders. "Or close the wall up with our English dead." K-Mart's smile is weak, but it's there and that's all Dolores needs in this life. They move together in the direction Claire had gone, passing Spence and Chase's reunion as they go.

"Get a room, you two."

"Or at least find some actual lube this time." Chase holds up the finger he's proudest of, but he doesn't unlatch his mouth from Spence's abs. Dolores' nose scrunches up in disgust as she glances away from them. No child, robot or real, wants to see their parents in that act.

The room they come into is barren compared to the one they left behind, two men and Alice being its sole occupants. Alice, the certified badass, jabs a knife into a man's forehead, sending him stumbling back against the foot of a chair. The other man, pale and scraggly like some extra in a bad porno, reaches for the sawed-off lying on the ground.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Alice snaps. The man pauses, still bent at the waist with his arm extended. The dead man rises and pulls the knife out of his head with ease, the skin patching back together without even a scar left over. He's broad, dressed in black leather that emphasizes this like a vampire from the 90's, blonde hair gelled back. The sick man lunges after the gun again, but K-Mart is faster as she snatches it up.

"Who the fuck are you," Sickly asks. K-Mart answers by pistol-whipping him across the face, driving him to the floor before tossing the gun to Alice. Alice catches it easily, turning in one fluid motion to stick the end of it in the man's mouth, ignoring the tentacles spilling out of it as she pulls the trigger. The man flies backwards against the chair again, the back half of his skull missing and the tentacles retracted.

"That's fucking gross," Dolores groans. "Since when did Agents of the Matrix have tentacles?"

"Wesker's a freak of nature," Alice says, picking up a tablet from the floor. She scrolls through it until she finds what she's looking for, pressing something that has two tubes rising up out of the floor; Claire is in one of them and her lookalike in the other.

"I remember Wesker. He said they could use me for spare parts." She moves over to the dead man and gives him a good kick as payback. Wesker groans, mouth opening and closing like a dying fish as Claire and her lookalike stalks over to him. The lookalike puts a boot on his neck to keep him down, then he and Claire empty their magazines into his chest. "Feel better," Dolores asks when they're done.

"No," Claire says," but it's a start."

"Who's your friend?" Claire manages a smile, playfully nudging the man's shoulder.

"He's my brother. Chris, this is Dolores and K-Mart." Chris nods his greeting, tossing the empty pistol away. He's dressed in army greens, strapped down with all manner of weapons, so one pistol doesn't make much of a dent. "How are you guys feeling?"

"Like I want to destroy private property."

"Why don't you guys go help get the others out of their tubes," Alice suggests. "And tell the lovebirds to knock it off. There are kids on this boat." Claire salutes and walks off with the others, but Alice grabs Dolores' arm to hold her back. "You really wanna do some damage, Dollie?"

"Always." Alice's grin is positively feral as she leads Dolores into another room. This one has only two things inside it, a small jet and a bomb powerful enough to blow the entire ship to Kingdom Come. "Are we blowing up a plane for funsies? Cause I'm not sure I'm down for that."

"Nope, we're putting the bomb in the plane as a little parting gift for Wesker."

"He's dead."

"Not for long. He injected himself with the T-virus, so he'll be back in a few minutes. The only way off this ship is with this plane and we both know he'll blow us up in a heartbeat if we don't blow him up first. So, is that okay with you?" Dolores shrugs her shoulders and gives Alice a shit-eating grin.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Do you have access to the ship's database?" Dolores nods and catches on quick enough. You can't just pull the bomb out willy-nilly, you have to do it in a certain sequence or else you'll just blow yourself up. Dolores moves over to the bomb, typing in the right code—142707, the same code as the doors in the Hive—and then moves the bomb out far enough to disconnect the wires at the back. "You're good at that."

"Daddy taught me about these bombs before things went sideways." There are different types that Umbrella uses, but these are the more powerful ones. Rectangular and the size of a boom box, these are meant to purge facilities that have been compromised. If the disease hadn't spread and forced them to nuke Raccoon City, they would have detonated one of these in the Hive. "Where do you want it set up?"

"Follow me." They board the plane, a tight space meant for a couple people and some supplies, and find the perfect hiding space. Alice yanks down the black nylon straps and moves a couple of supply bags to nestle the bomb inside. She replaces the bags and nylon, making it look untouched. "Let's hope this works."

"Fingers crossed." They move back to the others and soon they can make out the faint hum of an engine starting. Claire and Chris and Alice race off, but Dolores is comfortable watching the plane explode from the upper deck. The explosion is powerful, but far enough away that it only ruffles Dolores' curls, glowing white before the debris falls into the ocean.

"Do I wanna know," Chase asks, settling down next to her.

"Me and Alice blew that fucker up." Dolores is grinning and Chase laughs a little at the sight, pulling her against his side. Spence and K-Mart come to sit beside them, all of them touching to make sure this is real. They don't talk for a long time, but that's okay. Who needs conversation? As long as her family doesn't melt away, Dolores is happy.

"This is _Arcadia_ ," Alice's voice rings out over the speakers," broadcasting on the emergency frequency. Location 118.30 degrees west, 34.05 degrees north. There is no infection. Repeat, there is no infection. We offer safety and security, food and shelter. If you are out there, we will help you. There is hope." Overhead, a squadron of Umbrella jets rushes towards them.

"Well, the peace was nice while it lasted."


	6. Façade

Spence wakes with a soft hum, rolling onto his side to find his husband already out of bed. He hums again, but he doesn't move as Chase comes strolling out of the closet. He's clean-shaven and fully dressed, which means it's time for Spence to get up and put on pants.

"Morning always comes too early," he complains.

"You say that every morning." But Chase is smiling as he perches on the edge of their bed, reaching out to brush his fingertips along Spence's jaw. His touch is gentle and soft, nails blunt where they scratch lightly along his stubble. Spence loves this part of their routine, the unchanging nature of it.

"Dad," Dolores hollers from down stairs. "Is macaroni appropriate breakfast food?" The moment is broken and the men laugh at the ridiculous question, then Spence sobers up because his daughter is an idiot and she would actually make macaroni for breakfast.

"No," he hollers back. There's a long-suffering groan and the sound of a macaroni box being tossed back into the pantry. Unchanging routines continue and Spence isn't looking forward to what comes next. "Ready to face the day, Chase?" Chase grimaces and pulls Spence upright, tossing a pair of sweats at his head before walking out. Spence pulls on his sweats and even manages to get a pair of slippers on this morning before a window breaks downstairs and the screaming starts. He sprints down into the kitchen in time to pull Chase away from the growling horde, yanking him back and letting the zombies grab Dolores instead.

"Daddy," she screams, little hands reaching for him. "Please! Daddy, don't let them— Ahh!" It tears at his heart to hear the screaming pleas, but he knows this isn't his real daughter. It always takes a moment to kick in, to get that damn serum worn off, but he always remembers that his daughter is seventeen, not eight.

"Come on," he grunts, shoving Chase toward the backdoor. Chase hesitates at first, but allows himself to be towed along through the laundry room and out into their spacious backyard. This isn't his Chase either, but this clone is closer to the real thing than the clone of his daughter. "We gotta move, Chase!"

"Dollie—" Spence cuts him off with a harsh shove, knocking him against the privacy fence. On the other side of it is chaos, burning rubble that used to be a neighborhood and had never been a neighborhood in the same sense that this Chase and Dolores were never his. "Let go of me! This isn't right!" Chase's blue eyes shine with betrayal as he takes a step away from the fence.

"We have to go, Chase."

"Not without my daughter! Go on if you want, but I'm getting her back!" Spence squares his shoulders, giving a sharp nod as he turns his back on Chase. It hurts as much as it does every morning, but he'd rather not see his husband get torn to pieces again. They took Dolores with them five times and each time ended in them being overwhelmed because this version of Dolores is human. She couldn't withstand the scratching nails or blunt teeth, blood pooling around her instead of slick oil. Five times he'd watched it happen and he refuses to go through that again. Best she died out of his sight. The backdoor slams shut behind Chase's retreating form and Spence begins to climb, hoping tomorrow will somehow be different. He's just getting on top of the fence when the gunfire starts, freezing him in place because that's new. They don't have guns in the suburban home, so who the fuck is shooting? The answer appears a moment later, dressed in a pink jacket with some kind of fruity nonsense in a Starbucks cup.

"Howdy, neighbor," Dolores grins. "Feel like busting out of here?"

"You knew I was in danger of being eaten alive and you stopped for Starbucks? Jesus, the least you could have done was pick me up a goddamn latte."

"I did get you a latte, but then a zombie knocked it out of my hand. I don't know about you, but I feel like my hand is more important than overpriced coffee."

"And yet you held onto your smoothie?"

"I held my smoothie in my non-dominant hand." She says this in a tone of voice that practically screams _duh_ , _Dad_ , and he kind of wants to smack her for it. Instead he waits for her to get close enough before smacking the smoothie out of her hand and continuing over the fence. "You're such an ass. I told Chase we should've just sold you to the circus."

"Chase is alive?" Spence doesn't remember much after the squadron attacked the _Arcadia_ , just that he woke up here in an Umbrella simulator and has been doing his best to survive ever since.

"He's alive and he's in a bad mood. So, you know, not much has changed." He laughs then, a full-bellied thing that feels so good. He'd cherished those waking moments before the chaos, knowing Chase (or his clone at any rate) was close enough to touch. "Now, we really gotta get moving before the Queen regains control."

"The Queen? Red or White?"

"Red." That sends a violent shiver down Spence's spine, remembering a laser grid in a hallway made of glass, the cold tones of her speaking through his little girl saying they're all going to die. It's enough to spur him into action, taking Dolores' free hand and steering her past overturned cars and a downed helicopter. "This way." Dolores tries to take him down an alley, but he pulls her back.

"Zombies will overtake that alley in less than a minute."

"Which is why we need to hurry." She tugs on his hand again and he follows after her, climbing up a rope ladder that hasn't been there in the past ten weeks of passing by. When they're on the roof of an antiques store, Dolores rolls the ladder up and then continues forward.

"You don't expect me to jump onto the next roof, do you? I'm getting a little old for that."

"Not quite." She steps up on the ledge and reaches out, the air rippling until a keypad becomes visible. She types in the code and the air ripples again, two doors sliding open with a heavy _clunk_. Beyond them is a dark hall, lit weakly by flickering tubes overhead. "Let's go."

"This is bringing back all kinds of memories." He'd used to run a simulation like this, set in Tokyo to ensure the T-virus sold to the highest bidder in China. Down the long hall and to the right is another simulation, down the same hall and to the left is the control room. Dolores doesn't head down the right hall, though, she heads in the opposite direction. "Where are we going?"

"Shortcut." She's grinning at him over her shoulder, waiting on him to catch up. The doors shut behind them, blocking out the artificial sunlight. "There's a service tunnel that eventually lets out in the place where these assholes store submarines. It's how I got to you once Wesker hacked the system."

"The same Wesker you blew up?"

"He got better." She shrugs, pulling a couple of glow sticks out of the back pocket of her shorts. She cracks them and drops them down a hole in the floor, the cheap plastic bouncing off the metal walls before coming to a rest at least thirty feet below. "I'll explain everything, but we have to get moving." Spence nods, taking the lead and heading down the slick ladder built into the wall of the shaft.

"Explain, please. Why are we working with an asshole?"

"You and Alice were taken when Umbrella overwhelmed the ship and a lot of people were shot. I shoved K-Mart and Chase overboard, but I couldn't get to you and ended up falling into the water anyway. Wesker was in the water, too, and Chase dragged him to the shore."

" _Chase_ did? Our angry cowboy?"

"He was feeling empathetic, I guess. Anyway, when Wesker woke up he made a call to one of his teams and they showed up within a few days to whisk us away to Washington. We all thought you guys were dead until we intercepted a message about Projects Alice and Percival."

"I'm a project?"

"Apparently you breathed in the T-virus and it bonded with you just enough to enhance a few abilities. Go fucking figure. You and Mama get superpowers and all I get is a messed up line of code that makes things green. I'm starting to think I drew the short straw."

"Will I turn if I get bitten?"

"Oh yeah, you're not immune like Alice." Spence scowls, dropping the last foot and a half to the ground. Dolores follows suit, landing on the balls of her feet with a grace he envies. Spence has never been graceful, but damn if his girls aren't. He comes up short, surprise flooding his system as he realizes he's just lumped Alice in with Dolores and K-Mart. His girls. _I'll be damned_. "Down this tunnel."

"You got a spare gun?" She pulls out one of her matching pistols, printed with pink flowers on a white background. He takes it, glad to feel the familiar weight of it in his hand. He'd taught her how to use these pistols on the roof of that OKC hotel after they found them in an abandoned room on one of the upper floors. "Okay, so how'd you convince Wesker to come after us?"

"It was easy. I aimed my gun at his crotch and asked him how long it would take that part of his anatomy to grow back." He snorts and instantly regrets it as the sound echoes off slick metal walls. "After he realized I was serious, he taught me how to track you down and then he and his team came up with an extraction plan. Now, here I am."

"That's my girl." The lights go out suddenly, the pair stopping until Dolores grabs his hand. Her eyes, normally an earthy brown, glow a neon green as the night vision is activated. "I take it the Queen is back in control?"

"Must be. Stay close." They don't get twenty feet down the tunnel before a new crisis starts, the thunderous noise of water shooting down a narrow space. Spence is willing to bet his left shoe that the water isn't moving in the halls above them. "Here." She shoves a rebreather into his hands and he glances in her general direction in shock.

"You planned for this?"

"We planned for a swim in general." He puts the black mouth guard in and shoulders the small pack Dolores has been hauling this entire time, realizing it's oxygen once it's all hooked together. Lucky her, she doesn't need an oxygen tank since she doesn't technically need to breathe. "Hold tight."

The water hits them with the force of a small car, sending them tumbling into darkness. Spence's leg hits one of the walls with a snap that's probably more in his head, but the burning pain that follows certainly isn't and he can't even tell where his legs are at the moment, but they're most definitely not underneath him. He hits another wall and this time he's certain the ringing in his head is real because it blots out the sound of rushing water.

Something snags what he thinks is his arm, jerking him to the side and slamming something shut to keep the water from following him in. He's still out of sorts and there's water in his eyes and his leg is on fire, but suddenly there's a form leaning over him. They wipe the moisture out of his eyes and off his cheeks, small hands slapping his face lightly to make him focus.

"Mmmph." He doesn't know why he can't talk for a long minute before he remembers the rebreather still in his mouth and he spits it out. "Dollie?"

"Right here, Daddy. Hold on." She's not near Spence's head anymore, but he can just make out bouncing curls gathered in a bun at the top of her head, dripping water on her ruined jacket. He's not sure what she's doing at first, not even when he feels a couple pieces of rebar being settled on either side of his burning leg. "This is going to hurt."

"What's going to—" He _screams_ when the rebar is suddenly smashing a bone back into place, Dolores' belt keeping it all together. She pulls the string out of his waistband and then ties that around the lower half of the rebar, making a crude splint to keep him from damaging his leg any further. "Jesus Christ!"

"It'll be healed in an hour or so. Just hold on until then." Overhead, the swaying fluorescent tubes create weird shapes in the dark, casting shadows against the walls that make him think of flooded labs deep underground. It's not so different considering they're underneath the frozen Sea of Okhotsk just west of Kamchatka.

"We're going to die down here."

"Don't be such a drama queen." Dolores stands and even she looks weary, swaying slightly until she puts her hand against the wall. There's a jagged gash along her shoulder, mirroring the scar Spence had given Alice during one of the training sessions, a straight line that curls near her collar bone. "We need to keep moving. Can you walk?" She helps him up and he finds it manageable, though he has to grit his teeth to keep from crying out.

"It'll be slow going."

"We've got an hour and a half at most." He doesn't ask about the time limit, has, quite frankly, grown fed up with time limits. Nothing good ever comes from the damn things.

They continue down the offshoot, following a slow curve to the right until they come out in another, larger tunnel. There are stairs leading up on the right, but there's a group of people straight ahead and Spence isn't sure whether or not he can trust them. As far as he's concerned, the only person in all of Russia he trusts is his little girl. There are three men altogether; one tall and broad, dark-skinned like Dolores with a shaved head and a few tattoos. The other two are white, one dressed for battle with shaggy hair while the other is broad with pitch black hair smoothed back off his face. With them are two women and a little girl. Now, Spence knows the women well enough—one's Alice and the other is a clone of Rain—but the little girl clinging to Alice is a bit of a shock.

"Jesus," Dolores says, urging Spence forward. "What the fuck happened to you guys?"

"Chased by zombies through a simulation and nearly eaten by a mutated Licker," says the man with black hair. "How about you two?"

"Chased by zombies through a simulation and then nearly drowned in the service tunnel that leads here. All in all, it could have been worse." Spence begs to differ, but he's feeling a bit woozy so he doesn't say anything. "This is Luther, Leon and Barry." She points at each man in turn, the one with black hair being Barry. "Nice to see you again, Alice."

"You, too," Alice says with a dry smile.

"You still have God awful taste in clothes, though. Were you going for the dominatrix look or something?"

"Or something." There's a beat of silence and then they're all moving in unison toward the stairs, only a bit of awkward tension left. Granted, the awkward tension is between Spence and Alice, but it's still there. "Did Wesker send you, too?"

"Nah, Dollie came to my rescue," Spence says. "You in the habit of collecting kids?"

"Something like that, yeah." He doesn't question it, the kid looks a bit like Alice so it's probably a clone that shares some of her DNA. It's the same with Dolores' clone, completely human with the DNA of the kid Dolores' design had been based off of. Umbrella is full of twisted fucks.

Further along the tunnel is another ladder bolted to a wall that leads up to a catwalk. Spence isn't sure how he's supposed to make it up at first, but then Dolores is undoing her belt and the string, letting the pieces of rebar fall to the ground with a clatter. When he moves his leg, he finds it stiff but no longer broken.

"Trippy," he murmurs. Dolores nudges him toward the ladder and he goes without complaint, finding himself in the submarine pens she'd told him about nearly two hours ago. It's filled with steam, making him glad he'd never put on a shirt that morning as sweat begins beading along his upper lip.

"The elevator platforms are up ahead," Leon announces, checking his watch. "We got eleven minutes before the vents go boom." You see, that's why Spence doesn't like time limits. They always end with a boom or being sealed up alive with a murderous AI. He's calling bullshit on this whole adventure. Beside him, Dolores stiffens and nearly collapsing, eyes glowing green for a brief second. "What is it, Parks?"

"That Licker you guys faced," Dolores starts. "Was it the size of a double-decker bus?" The men share a look and then nod, gripping their weapons tighter. "The Red Queen just gave it our location. We need to move." They break into a sprint that makes Spence's leg protest, getting to the platform in record time.

"Hold tight," Barry says, wrapping his fingers around the control. "Next stop: Menswear and sporting goods." The platform gets half a foot off the ground before jerking to a stop, the lights flickering and then going out. "That's not good."

"I'm on it," Dolores states. She hops off the platform and moves to the digital control panel, fixing a bug to it and then typing in a string of code that has the lights coming back on. She gives a satisfied smile, practically skipping back to the platform. "We're good."

"Uh, not quite." They all follow Barry's gaze to the hulking creature above them, long claws digging into the metal as it slowly descends on them. Spence freezes, remembering a smaller version of this creature in the Hive, how Dolores had shoved him out of the way and taken the brunt of the hit. That's when the pieces had slotted into place, wires spilling out of her tiny arm as they both remembered what she was.

"Daddy, give me your tank." He unshoulders the oxygen and passes it to her, watching as she twists the tank to get the air going. When it's a steady stream, she throws it and watches the Licker's jaws clamp tightly around it. He's still watching when a hand yanks him with the others off the platform until just Dolores is standing there. She pulls out a lighter, purple plastic that she'd picked up in a 7-11 two years ago.

"Our daughter's a badass," he breathes.

"Damn right," Alice grins. Dolores flicks the lighter and the flame catches on a tail of oxygen, following it up to the tank and forcing the metal to expand. The resulting explosion isn't quite as powerful as it should have been since it's mainly contained to the Licker's mouth, but Spence's hair is ruffled and he gets hit in the face with what might be part of a liver.

"Oh, goddammit. That's not right." Back on the platform, covered in blood and gore, Dolores gives them a thumbs-up. "We raised an idiot."

"Yes we did."

"At your six," Dolores calls. No one else seems to get it, but Alice and Spence turn in unison to shoot the leather-clad Umbrella soldiers sneaking up behind them. There are more soldiers moving in, far too many for their group to handle, so Spence and Alice usher them back over to the platform. A round of bullets ricochet off the metal, one of them finding Luther's arm and another burying itself in Barry's chest.

"Son of a bitch," Barry groans, blood staining his teeth. He glares down at the soldiers, seemingly unaware of the blood pouring down the front of his red vest. It creates an ugly mess of torn fabric and feathers, but he stays standing all the same and Spence respects him for that. "Well, I'm not gonna make it."

"Yes, you can."

"Someone needs to distract these fuckers. Give Wesker my fondest regards." Leon's smile is a grim thing, but he ducks his head in a nod. Barry, on the other hand, is outright grinning as he jumps off the platform. He's just staring to shoot wildly at the soldiers when Leon moves to the control, yanking on the lever and barely moving as the platform jolts into action. It rises steadily upward, bringing them even with the sea's frozen surface.

"Nice ride," Spence quips. The Thiokol Spryte waiting for them looks downright cozy in the graveyard of ships, practically shining in comparison to the rusted metal. Spence wonders how long he's been underwater, if it's been longer than the ten weeks he can remember.

"I'm proud of it," Leon shrugs. All but Dolores are shivering almost violently in the cold, crowding into the Spryte and huddling together in the seats. Dolores does them the favor of driving, the Spryte jerking a little when a bomb goes off that must level the Kamchatka outpost.

"Glad we weren't down there when it blew."

"It only would have sucked if we weren't on the platform. The whole place flooded, but the platform would have shot upward to the surface." The next hour passes in peace, the others relaxed and warming up while Spence stays tense. He's not sure if it's the throbbing leg or the knowledge of where peace had led them these past six or seven years, but he can't relax in his seat.

"Do you guys feel that," Rain asks, glancing down at her feet. Now that she mentions it, Spence can feel a faint vibration shooting through his slippers. He doesn't have time to comment on it when the Spryte is suddenly on its side, tossing its passengers like eggs in a skillet. Spence cries out when the little girl thumps against his bad leg, but it's better than smashing her head against a door.

"Sound off," Spence groans. "Who's not dead?"

"That's not funny, asshole," Luther snaps. When his vision clears, Spence finds the others in much the same shape as himself—dazed, scared, and more than a little pissed off. Rain is lying against Luther's side, brown eyes unseeing and neck hanging at an unnatural angle. Spence grunts as he maneuvers onto his back, checking to make sure everyone other than Rain is still alive. In the front seat, Dolores is doing her best to reattach her left arm. "Someone get a door open."

"On it." Spence gives a good kick to the door above him, the busted metal swinging outward with a groan of protest. He's the first one out, helping the others apart from the little girl. Alice is the last one out and she nods at the Spryte. "What?"

"You're on Becky duty," Alice states.

"Like hell I am."

"Just sit on the damn car with a gun and make sure she doesn't die." He scowls but sits down all the same, slippered feet thumping against the windshield as he glances around. The thing that caused their wreck is obvious, the top of a submarine poking up through the thick ice. Three women step out of it, one unfamiliar in a cat suit, the second being Ada Wong in handcuffs, and the third being a leather-clad clone of Rain.

"They look like some kind of pop group from the 90's. Which one of you is Sporty Spice?"

"I can't wait to rip your tongue out," Cat Suit scowls.

"Oh, you're definitely Scary Space. Good to know." Cat Suit's scowl deepens even more, an amazing feat that twists her pleasant features into something ugly. Spence's eyes move downward, taking in the mechanical spider strapped to her chest. He knows that spider, designed it himself when he was still in training. "I like your accessory." She sends a cold glance in Rain's direction, a signal Rain had apparently been waiting for. She brings a syringe out of her pocket, injecting something into her neck that Spence can't quite make out. "What the fuck is that?"

"The Las Plagas parasite," Leon informs him. He knows the name, had even gotten a peek at it before the Hive's meltdown, but he's never seen it injected in a living subject before.

The fight starts after that, a blur of movement Spence is still too dazed to follow completely. In one spot, Rain is taking on Leon and Luther, her wounds stitching up faster than they're created. In another spot, Cat Suit is expertly dodging the combined attack of Dolores and Alice. And then there's Spence, stuck on top of a car, guarding a kid he's just met.

"Get the spider off her," he hollers. "Get it off!" Dolores and Alice lock gazes, each of them on either side of Cat Suit. They move in unison, Alice tackling Cat Suit's legs while Dolores leaps up onto her back like a monkey. Dolores pins Cat Suit to the ice, only lifting enough to spin her onto her back before settling back down on her torso.

"Hurry, Alice," Dolores growls. Alice is growling, too, working to get the spider off and to keep Cat Suit down in the same instant.

On the other end, Rain is fighting better than any human has a right to. She slams the heel of her palm against Luther's chest watching unflinchingly as he stills and then falls to the ice with a strangled gasp. Soon his chest has stopped moving and she focuses entirely on Leon.

"It's off! Now what?"

"Destroy it," Spence shouts. Alice tosses the spider up into the air, using a couple shots to break it. Cat Suit convulses underneath Dolores, the heels of her boots kicking useless against the ice before going still. She's not dead, but she'll be weak for a few hours.

"Spence, help," Leon yells. A small hand pops out of the Spryte, holding a stick of dynamite for Spence to take. He thinks, briefly, of that scene in Anastasia where Dimitri and Anastasia separated their car from the rest of the train before it could crash.

"Kid, you're awesome." Becky grins as he takes it, then hands him a book of matches to go with it. Spence moves across the ice with stilted steps, his shoes sliding unsteadily over the ice until he's a few feet from Rain and Leon. Leon meets his gaze, then glances down at the dynamite in Spence's hand and gives a grin as hard as glass. Leon ducks and jumps aside as Spence lights the fuse, Rain turning to follow him as Spence throws the stick. She catches it, staring down at it in bewilderment while the men slip and slide back to the Spryte. They get in right as the stick explodes, shaking the car slightly and sending a few droplets of blood splattering the open door. "At least I didn't get a chunk of liver in my face this time," Spence says. "I don't even _like_ liver." Leon says nothing, breathing hard as he stares out into the fading sunlight. They climb back out when they don't hear any gunshots or screaming, finding the women all collapsed in a heap near the Spryte. "Y'all okay?"

"Well, I'm breathing," Alice shrugs. "Is Dollie's arm still in there?" Spence ducks down and grabs the limb, cold now that the internal heating mechanism has been severed. He pops back up, waving it as a large chopper appears out of the heavy cloud cover. "Looks like our backup made it."

"I'm gonna punch the pilot." Leon scoops Cat Suit up against his chest, the first one inside the chopper with the others following after him. Spence tosses Dolores her arm and makes his way past the row of sterile gurneys, barely acknowledging K-Mart's presence. He said he was gonna punch the pilot for being so late and, dammit, he's gonna do it. "Hey, asshole!" The pilot turns, blue eyes bright and his smile even brighter.

"Is that any way to greet your rescuer," Chase asks. Spence doesn't punch him while they're in the air, but it's a close thing. He's too busy watching the snow and fields roll out below them, barren wastelands devoid of living people. There are a few buildings still standing in the cities, but mostly it's all a ruin.

They reach Washington ten hours later and Spence wonders if this is what it looked like in 1814 when the British soldiers set everything on fire. Even the White House is in tatters, surrounded by a few soldiers and a massive wall to keep out the dead. The zombies number in the millions, beating like waves against the wall.

They touch down on the backyard of the White House, Chase leading them inside and down enough halls to make Spence's head spin. It's not a difficult feat, his head has taken a pounding in the past few hours and he still has a faint ringing in his right ear. Spence, Alice, and Dolores step into the famous Oval Office, a soldier shutting a door behind them to keep the rest of their group out in the hall. The windows have been barricaded with sandbags and Albert Wesker is sitting behind the desk with the same smug grin he's worn for as long as Spence can remember. He'd punched this man once in basic training, broken his nose, but there's no sign of that now.

"You look comfy," Spence says.

"It's certainly better than the chair I had on the _Arcadia_ ," Wesker replies. Spence blinks and then Wesker is suddenly in front of him, jabbing a needle into Alice's neck and depressing the plunger. She drops with a cry and Wesker's moving again before Spence can land a solid blow, his fist catching the edge of Wesker's sunglasses. There's a sharp pain in Spence's arm and he has enough time to glance down and see blue ( _blue for the virus, green for the antivirus_ ) before the pain spreads like wildfire up into his chest.

"Son of a bitch!" Spence drops beside Alice, clawing at his chest until he feels warm blood. When the pain eases and he's able to sit up again, his wounds have healed. "What the fuck was that?"

"Well, I have no need for either of you if you aren't enhanced." Wesker says this like he's talking about the weather, bland and bored. He's pacing around them, Dolores perched on the edge of the desk like she knew all of this was going to happen. There's a guilty twist to her lips, but a hard resolve in her eyes that she learned from Spence.

"What'd you dose us with," Alice demands. She's still lying down, one hand clutching her neck as the veins stand out along the tanned column of it.

"You did so well with the T-virus that I gave you a little upgrade, Alice. You were injected with the Las Plagas virus. Spence, on the other hand, was given a stronger dose of the T-virus. He didn't handle it quite as well as you did, but I have strong hopes for him. Isn't that right, Dolores?" Dolores glances away without answering. Spence realizes why she teamed up with Wesker now, she'd been promised a rescue operation in exchange for Spence and Alice to be weaponized. He can't even get mad at her for it because he would have done the same thing to get her back.

"I'm going to kill you."

"Perhaps you will in the end. Before that, though, you've got work to do. Follow me." Dolores helps them both up and nods to a door disguised as a wall panel. Spence and Alice lean on each other at first, but then his heart starts beating in a normal rhythm again and he's able to support himself.

Wesker leads them out onto the roof, giving them a closer view than Chase's helicopter had allowed. It's more real like this, when he can hear the groans and growls of the undead, the constant gunfire from the guard towers. He swallows hard at the stench of unwashed bodies and rot.

"The Red Queen is determined to destroy all life on earth," Wesker tells them as they come to a stop. "All that remains of the human race is right here."

"They make for shitty company," Dolores quips. "All doom and gloom and never wanting to play Candyland."

"She cheats." Spence glances over at Wesker in amusement, trying to picture this hulking display of idiocy playing Candyland. The dude didn't even like to do shots when they were younger. "There's also the fact that the enemy is practically knocking on our door."

"He's just a sore loser," Leon says. He and the rest of their group come out onto the roof, taking up positions beside the others. Chase slips his hand in Spence's and gives it a reassuring squeeze and Spence has to remind himself that this really is his cowboy.

"This is humanity's last stand. The beginning of the end." There's a moment where no one speaks, looking out at the ruins of Washington. Tiny creatures screech as they soar through the air, a few taken out by helicopters or taking out the helicopters. The Washington Monument looks like it'll topple in a stiff wind and nearly does when a helicopter crashes into it.

"Will you guys follow me," Alice asks finally. She turns on the ledge to look at the others as they fall into line in front of her. It's as natural as breathing for Spence to follow orders. As long as he's alive, he'll follow anyone who knows what they're doing. Alice, above all, has the best idea on how to survive. He glances around and takes a step forward so that she's looking him in the eye.

"You already know my answer," he murmurs. "I've quoted it enough times and in plenty of situations." He pauses, reaching out his free hand for Dolores and smiling a little when she grasps it. "Your men love you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough."

"Those situations weren't as dire as this one, Spence." He glances behind her again, following a cone of fire as it sprays across the waves of the dead. He thinks of all the missions they've undergone, the closeness they'd had, of fists colliding and teeth digging in and most of all the little girl they somehow managed not to screw up too badly. When he meets her gaze again, he can see that their past has occurred to her as well. He'd tried to betray her back in the Hive, but they've always been best as a team.

"I'm with you, Alice. Always."

[ **Spence's quote at the end.** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95N85bGdzw4&t=46s&ab_channel=Movieclips)


	7. Family

It's the night before they head out for what's left of Raccoon City and they're gathered around the President's desk. Spence had expected a serious meeting when he and Chase were summoned, but instead he found a Candyland board set up with some popcorn and soda nearby.

"Seriously," he asks. "I could be sleeping, but you dorks wanna play a board game?"

"Might as well have some fun before we get traumatized all over again," K-Mart states. She's sitting on Dolores' lap, playing with a bendy straw. That first night back from Russia, he'd asked K-Mart why she hadn't gone with Dolores on the rescue mission and she had shrugged with a deepening blush and said, _Because she begged me to stay safe_.

It's been two weeks since then and he doesn't think he's seen the girls separated; they eat together, sleep in the same bed, they even go to the bathroom together. He can't complain, he and Chase have done much the same as them, but it's…. Different somehow. Or maybe the right word is _strange_ , strange to be seeing this kid, his baby girl, old enough to kiss another person without instantly wiping her mouth because she didn't want to catch cooties.

"You gonna sit down so I can kick your ass or not, old man," Alice demands, looking up at him expectantly. He settles down on a folding chair between Alice and Chase, sharing a fleetingly awkward glance with the both of them. Now that Alice is a permanent fixture, he feels like he's stuck in an episode of Reba since his ex is always close by and his husband is closer.

"Who goes first," he asks.

"Youngest to oldest," Wesker says. It's something of a shock to see the ex-agent in their group, hulking muscles and glowing red eyes hidden by dark sunglasses. There's no trace of the young man he used to be, the STARS Captain beaten and reshaped by the apocalypse into something hard as marble. "Dolores goes first."

"Naturally." Spence slides the stack of cards across the table, smiling as Dolores snatches one up almost before he lets them go. She's always loved this game and he's grateful the apocalypse hasn't stolen this last vestige of innocence from her. She moves her piece—a Monopoly thimble—to the second red square and leans back so that K-Mart can go.

They continue like this in relative peace, occasionally trash-talking and always laughing. It feels so good to be doing something normal, takes Spence back to 2002 before the bombing when the Parks family were intact and mostly normal. They had played this game every Saturday night because Sundays were entirely their own and they could sleep in before going outside to play if the weather was nice. In Kansas, nice weather was a relative term that usually meant light jackets for all.

Towards the end of the game, when Dolores' thimble and Wesker's bright red Game of Life car are in the lead, things start to heat up. Dolores has a competitive streak a mile wide and Wesker's is just as bad. They lean over the board, the trash talk turning personal until Spence thinks his daughter and colleague's heads might just explode.

Wesker draws a card and lets out a low, inhuman growl that makes the fine hairs at Spence's nape stand on end. He doubts this card invites him to King Kandy's castle and he's proven correct when Wesker snatches up his car and moves it back to the Gumdrop Mountains. Dolores draws her card next and crows her victory to the heavens, slapping her thimble down on Kandy's grinning face.

"Suck it," she yells, dumping K-Mart on the floor when she jumps up. She points a finger in Wesker's face and Spence admires Wesker's restraint in not biting the kid's finger right off. "Oh yeah! I'm the Candyland champ and Wesker's a big, fat loser!"

"Keep yelling like that and I'll throw you off the roof," Wekser growls. Three sets of eyes snap to him with a deep, burning malice, but Wesker doesn't seem to notice. Alice's hand has dropped to one of the knives decorating her belt, a safety precaution.

"You're just a baby. Wanna play again?"

"Yes," Wesker says in the same instant that everyone else groans a negative. One game is more than enough with these people. It's stress they don't need when they could be sleeping. _Or_ , Spence thinks, glancing over at his husband, _doing other things in bed_. "Kennedy, get the vodka." And just like that, Spence is totally down for another game.

Semi-drunken Candyland slowly morphs into drunken charades that pits the group against one another in two teams. Spence, Alice, Dolores, and K-Mart are all on one team while Chase, Wesker, Ada, and Kennedy are on the other one, their exaggerated movements becoming even more ridiculous the more they drink. By the time the game is over and Team Teenage Robot wins, the only sober one is Dolores. Team Teen Titans is too drunk to care (except for Wesker, who doesn't even like to lose in his _sleep_ ).

"That was so great," Spence gushes, leaning heavily against Chase. "We should do that again. We could do it on Saturdays 'cause there's no training on Sundays and Dollie doesn't get drunk anyway, so she can make the room stop spinning. Whee!" He lurches in time with the room, whacking his head on a doorframe and setting his ear on fire. "Ow, fuck!"

"Stop movin'," Chase grunts, not nearly drunk enough. He's a surly drunk at any rate, more likely to start a fight than cuddle. Still, Spence is cuddly enough for the both of them and he tries to kiss his husband's cheek only to miss and get Alice's nose instead.

"Sorry, Ally." Alice giggles and leans forward to plant a kiss on Spence's nose in return. That sets them both off into a giggle fit and Chase slumps against the wall until they're finished. "She kissed my nose, Chasey," he whispers dramatically. "I kissed her nose, too!"

"Alright, keep the line moving," Dolores orders somewhere behind them. "No drunk threesomes you'll all regret come morning." That makes Spence laugh again and he doesn't even care why. "Kay, will you help me get them—" But K-Mart is already passed out in the hall, snoring like an air raid siren. "Oh boy."

"I got him," Chase says, moving again. "You just worry about getting your girl to bed. Spence, you're really gonna regret drinking so much when you wake up in the morning." Spence snorts because that's ridiculous.

Eight hours later, Spence opens his eyes to find himself naked in a bed with three other people. Alice and Chase come as no surprise, he's a regular whore when it comes to vodka, but Wesker is something of a shock. Even more of a surprise is that Wesker is a _snuggler_. If he still had a phone, Wesker drooling on Chase's abs would be his wallpaper for months.

Chase groans and that starts a chain reaction of opening eyes and regret. Wesker sits up so fast that he topples off the bed, though that was bound to happen considering the fact that a twin bed was not designed to hold four adults. Alice, bless her, is clinging to Spence like a demonically possessed pretzel to ensure she doesn't follow Wesker's example.

"Did we have sex last night," Alice asks. "I don't feel like I did, but that could be the advanced healing."

"You topped Spence," Chase says, voice a faint rasp. "Wesker topped me and then he cried about…. Uh, why were you crying, Wesker?" Wesker grumbles something, still lying face-first on the floor. Chase translates when Alice and Spence make twin sounds of confusion. "He was crying because he just remembered that he'll never get to see how the last Lord of the Rings movie ends." There's another grumble and then Chase is translating again. "He gets really emotional when he drinks vodka and he's regretting not choosing whiskey now."

"Me, too," Spence says, burying his face into his pillow. "I should have stuck with Sprite." A blinding hangover isn't the proper way to start the day and he wonders if they can push their mission back a day just so he doesn't feel like puking or committing a homicide.

" _What will we do with a drunken sailor_ ," Dolores sings loudly out in the hallway. _"What will we do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?"_ Her voice grows softer the farther she goes, but it makes Spence's head give a nasty throb.

"That child is the devil." The others groan their agreement, taking a moment longer to wallow in their mistakes. Wesker is the first to rise, pulling on his clothes and leaving the room for his own. Alice follows after him, shuffling out into the hall and to the left. "Wanna try for round two?"

"Not on your life," Chase says. He's green about the gills, blue eyes squinted against the watery sunlight managing to invade the room. "Let's get dressed before Dollie comes back to finish that song and I'm forced to throw her out a window." It's as good a motivation as any, Chase and Spence moving around each other in order to get ready for the day.

They're some of the last to arrive in the makeshift cafeteria, easily spotting their group of friends at a table farthest from the windows. It's theirs by right of rank, the ones who come up with the plans and fight at the front lines. Sometimes Spence will look around him and be surprised at how comfortable he's gotten around Ada and Wesker when they were trying to kill each other just two years ago.

"I saved you some eggs," K-Mart says, pushing a couple plates across the table. It's a little cold by now and the eggs taste like rubber, but Spence shovels them in and downs a glass of orange juice. It's all powdered, the only things that had been left behind after the President was evacuated or murdered, and Spence wonders if Hawkeye and Trapper John had felt the same roll of nausea at the thought of eating.

"How many men are we taking today," Chase asks. He's picking at his food, pushing the eggs away from his toast. Their table sobers and not just because of their hangovers. They're leaving the base today, the first time in nearly a month, and the thought of being vulnerable makes them all tense.

"Only our table," Wesker says. "It's all we can spare." There are two hundred fighters altogether, but there's also the elderly, invalids, and children to consider. They can't leave those people unguarded and there have to be at least seventy men in order to keep the horde at bay, plus the extra reinforcements for a night crew. "We set out in two hours."

"Do you really think the Red Queen will be able to track us from so far away," Dolores asks. She hasn't eaten a thing, hasn't even touched her coffee, but he supposed she doesn't really need to. Eating and drinking are just habits for her.

"I have no doubt about it. I also don't think she's doing it on purpose." That gets everyone's attention, their gazes falling to Wesker in unison. He doesn't back down, doesn't even blink. "We had a few computers still running when we first arrived in Washington and I found some footage that didn't belong. It had been uploaded by Alicia Marcus."

"Who the hell's that?"

"Co-owner of the Umbrella Corporation. The video was of Doctor Isaacs talking about how the world would soon be overrun with humans if we didn't make the population drop drastically. He suggested a man-made plague that would leave only the Umbrella high command and their close family alive."

"So I didn't cause the spread in Raccoon City," Spence asks.

"You caused the Hive to go into lockdown, but that's all. All this other is because Isaacs is a zealot and a purist. He's ensured that the Red Queen is loyal to Umbrella, unable to disobey a direct order, and that's why she's been trying to wipe us out. If we shut her down again, we can end her attack at least for a little while."

"Isaacs is dead," Alice states. "Who's calling the shots if not him?"

"His clone is dead, yes. The real Isaacs is in cryogenic storage in what used to be the Hive. I say we shoot him in the head after we shut down the Queen. There's going to be some problems getting there, though."

"You mean aside from the starving zombies and weird hallways filled with lasers?" Wesker pauses to arch his brows, but Alice isn't one to back down from an argument. "My family and I were nearly killed in the Hive and a trained Umbrella team _were_ killed. We have a lot of problems to deal with, Wesker."

"There's also the second Isaacs clone. He's stationed himself somewhere in what used to be Missouri, which means we may just have to pass him on our way home. He's charismatic, so he'll have followers."

"Then I'll kill him, too."

The next two hours pass in something of a blur, filled with last-minute training and packing. They don't worry about fresh clothes, mostly putting on bullet-proof vests and army fatigues so they have more pockets to put their weapons in. Spence pockets a few grenades, remembering how bad the situation in Las Vegas could have been if they hadn't had one.

"You ready for this," Chase asks. He's leaning against the doorframe, looking like he's posing for a magazine in his fatigues and cowboy hat. He'd found it at some point before Spence was rescued from Russia and Spence absolutely loves seeing him wearing it.

"As I'll ever be." Chase's smile is tense, but it's there and it's _real_. All those weeks forced to watch Chase's clones dying have done a number on Spence and he wakes up some mornings terrified that the screaming would start at any moment. He saunters over to his husband, pressing a soft kiss to Chase's lips. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Are y'all trying to remake a Hallmark movie," K-Mart asks. Her room is directly across from Chase and Spence's, her and Dolores watching the display with goofy smiles. Judging by the smudged lipstick, he's going to guess that his girls have already had their Hallmark movie moment.

"Damn straight. It's not December without one."

"Oh God, it really is December. We seriously need some hot cocoa and Reddi-wip." Just the thought of hot chocolate has Spence's mouth watering, yet another thing the apocalypse had effectively wiped out. Unless they can find some uninfected cows, there'll be no milk. "Dammit, I made myself hungry again." Dolores pulls a package of LifeSaver gummies out of her pocket and hands them over without stopping to think. "Do you just carry junk food around for when I'm feeling peckish?"

"Yep," Dolores says.

"You're perfect for me, you know that?" Dolores grins and wraps her arm around K-Mart's waist, tugging her as close as the kevlar will allow.

"Yep." The walkie on Dolores' hip crackles to life, Wesker's voice a little garbled in the static.

"Incoming transmission from the Hive," he states in his usual monotone. "Report immediately to my office." The four of them take off in tandem, striding quickly through the halls and occasionally hitting a soldier with one of their duffles. Wesker and the rest of their close group are gathered around the same table that had held the Candyland board last night. "Ready?"

"Ready," Alice confirms. Wesker hits a button on a little gadget and the Red Queen's hologram grows out of it, the same little girl from ten years ago. She flickers in and out like static on a dead channel, but her voice rings out clearly in the office.

"My satellites show that there are 4,472 humans remaining on earth. They will cease to exist in under forty-eight hours if you do not stop me."

"Is this a game to you?"

"On the contrary, it's a plea. Umbrella developed an airborne antivirus that is capable of destroying the T-virus and everything it has infected. Release it outside and this sickness will end, giving humanity a chance to start over. I'm contacting you because you know exactly how to get the antivirus."

"Let me guess, it's back in the Hive?"

"Precisely." Alice rolls her eyes and drops onto the desk's edge. She's exhausted even with the Las Plagas virus keeping her healthy, the lack of bags under her eyes not meaning she's been sleeping well. "My programming will not allow me to harm the Umbrella Corporation, but you all are bound by no such constraints."

"You seemed pretty intent on harming all of us ten years ago," Spence interrupts. The hologram turns to face him and he thinks of a red glow outlining his daughter's face, the foreign voice echoing along her vocal cords to say _you're all going to die down here_. Anger floods through his veins like fire, burning paths straight to his heart. "From what I recall, you set a Licker loose to kill me and my daughter."

"You committed treason, Percival Parks. You had to be dealt with." He grinds his teeth until his jaw aches, striding away from the desk. He doesn't leave the room, though, doesn't dare leave his family with the Red Queen. "I'm resetting Alice's watch with the new timeline. The clock is ticking, I suggest you all get moving." The hologram flickers and then goes out, leaving the room blanketed by an oppressive silence.

"Do we listen to her?"

"Do we have a choice," K-Mart asks. "We were already headed to the Hive anyway. Might as well get the cure before we shoot Isaacs in the face." They all turn to look at where Alice and Wesker are standing, the unofficial leaders of their group. Alice is chewing on her lip as she thinks, but Wesker is coolly detached as though they hadn't just listened to an AI tell them about a miracle cure. Maybe getting laid just makes him more of an asshole.

"I say we go," Alice murmurs, looking around. "We have to kill the Queen anyway, might as well check to see if that cure's the real deal."

"If we can get the world back up and running, we could have decent coffee," Spence adds. He sends a pointed look at his daughter and finds that she's grinning wickedly. They don't share an ounce of DNA, but that grin is one hundred percent Spence's influence.

"Well, I'm in," Kennedy says, wrapping his arm loosely around Ada's shoulders. She shrugs the arm off, but she's smiling fondly at him as she nods. "The plane is ready for us."

They each take a moment to shoulder their bags and then they're off, striding down back hallways and out onto the south lawn. The grass is dead and trampled, partially hidden under a fine dusting of early December snow. Back in Kansas, he and Alice would take Dolores out for the first snowfall of the year and they'd sit on the covered porch to watch it turn their backyard into a wonderland.

" _Sleigh bells ring, are ya listening_ ," Alice sings softly, lacing her fingers with Spence's. _"In the lane, snow is glistening. A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, walking in a winter wonderland."_ Spence reaches out with his free hand, drawing Chase close and watching K-Mart do the same with Dolores.

The plane isn't overly large, more suited to a mom and pop tourist gig, but it's got enough space for their group. They file inside and find their seats, old, cracked leather things that poke uncomfortably at Spence's thighs. Wesker takes up the pilot's seat while Ada sits in the seat next to his, all of them buckling in.

" _Gone away is the bluebird_ ," Dolores picks up, her voice harmonizing nicely with Alice's," _here to stay is the new bird. He sings a love song as we go along walking in a winter wonderland."_ The engines create a gentle hum as the door is closed and latched, then they're slowly moving along the lawn. They're getting awfully close to the rusted gate before they start to rise, the pitted spires trailing the belly of the plane before they and the busted fountain fall away out of sight.

"And we're off," Chase says. "This is only the second time I've flown. Sure hope it turns out better than last time."

"You and me both, Chasey," Spence says, giving his hand a comforting squeeze. He rests his head against the window, forcing himself to keep breathing and not remember the last time he'd flown. They're not going to be captured right after they land and Jill is safely in the white house as the interim leader.

"Do you remember that first winter we spent together," Dolores asks. When he glances over at her, he finds her eyes closed and her lips pulled up in a rare smile, gentle all around and reminding him of the smiles she'd given when she was still a little girl. "I'd never seen snow before then."

"You stayed out all night," Alice says, laughing. "It was freezing, but you insisted on remaining on the porch with a cup of cocoa and a red stocking cap." She laughs again and it makes Spence relax because nothing is wrong as long as Alice can laugh like that. "Spence was so worried that he stayed at the living room window all night to make sure you were safe."

"There were coyotes in the woods," he grumbles defensively. "I'd just gotten the kid, I wasn't going to explain to Smith that his grand creation had been drug off in the night." The first month had been nerve-wracking, he'd been so worried Dolores would be ruined and they'd take the money out of his account. Now here he is ten years later, forgetting sometimes that this child is a robot instead of flesh and blood.

"I could have handled a coyote," Dolores says, opening her eyes with another grin. "All I'd have to do is drop an Acme anvil on its head and watch it slink back into the woods like a wrecked accordion." They're all laughing now, everyone except Wesker, and the world seems brighter even if only for an instant. Who can be surly when the world is shrouded by snow and Christmas is right around the corner? Spence is an atheist who's never once picked up the Bible, but he loves the idea of celebration.

"When we get back, after we save the world, I say we get drunk on champagne and exchange gifts."

"That sounds fun," Kennedy says, nodding. "We could do secret Santa with some homemade shit." This how they pass the next two hours, laughing and passing ideas (and Kennedy's flask) back and forth before they notice the ground coming steadily closer. The landing is a bit rough and they end up flipping a Toyota before they come to a stop on I-70, leaving tar-black tracks behind them.

"Everyone gear up," Wesker orders as he stands. "I don't want us to get caught off guard." By the time they get back on solid land, everyone has at least one gun drawn and two magazines stuffed in their front pockets for easy reloading. "Parks, lead the way to the Hive."

Spence takes the lead with Alice and Chase flanking him, Wesker and Ada taking up the rear with all the others stuffed between them. The road is littered with broken-down cars and trucks, tires melted to the asphalt from the blast. There are still people inside the cars, charred skeletons with blackened fingers clutching at the steering wheel like they're just stuck in the world's most depressing traffic jam. They move slowly past the cars, keeping their steps light and all conversation to a standstill so they don't draw any attention their way. They come across a few zombies, but they're decrepit things that aren't worthy of a bullet.

Spence had watched Raccoon City's destruction on the news, but watching it on television and seeing the results firsthand is like comparing a tricycle and a motorcycle. The buildings and all landmarks have been leveled, glass shards and a thick layer of brick dust covering everything. He can see straight ahead to where his home had once stood, now nothing but a crater remaining.

"This is your first time seeing this, isn't it," Kennedy asks.

"Yeah." Spence's voice catches in his throat and he has to repeat himself, the word coming out as a faint rasp. He can taste the decay hanging in the air, can almost hear the echoing pleas for help that must have been ringing out before the bomb dropped. Wait a second…. "Do you guys hear that?"

"It's coming from over there." Kennedy points at a lone building that somehow escaped the destruction and Spence can see a few people dotting the top of it. He thinks of ants climbing dutifully across their hill and then shakes the thought away because that's just stupid. Those aren't ants up there, those are _humans_.

"Alice," a man shouts, one of the figures jumping and waving their arms wildly. The others join in soon after, their voices overlapping until he can't make out the words anymore.

"Carlos," Alice calls, stepping forward. The shouting gets louder and then the figures have disappeared, swallowed up. "I think that was Carlos." Alice's eyes have gone wide and there's a flush to her cheeks like she's a schoolgirl with a crush. "We got separated after we killed Isaacs that first time. I thought he was dead." The figures come running out the front door, all of them colliding against Alice with sweet laughter and warm hugs. "I thought you guys were dead!"

"You can't get rid of us that easily." Carlos doesn't pull back right away and his fingers linger against the inside of her wrist as though he's checking her pulse. Behind him, Claire and Chris are still smiling like a pair of lovesick puppies, but that or indescribable anger seems to be the common reaction to Alice's presence. "What are you doing here?"

"We're gonna end this or die trying. We gotta get to my old house and then find a way underground." They follow Alice's gaze to the massive crater, Claire's smile dimming. "There's a cure there, guys. We just have to find it and release it outside."

"A cure," Chris asks. "Seriously?" He lets out a sharp noise, narrowing his eyes. His hair has grown longer since the last time Spence saw him, a rich brown that hangs slightly in front of his pale eyes. He's handsome and Spence would climb him like a tree if he knew the guy wasn't straight (and Chase didn't mind, of course).

"We have to move carefully," Claire says. "There's this militia set up in a shop a few blocks from here and they have all sorts of traps put up. They use anyone they capture as food to keep the zombies at bay for a few hours." Spence shudders at the thought, pulling Chase slightly closer.

"What's his name again? That weird leader with the accent?" Dread pools in Spence's belly, cold and reptilian, like a ball of snakes. Very few people would have reason to set up camp inside Raccoon City unless they were looking for something specific. Something like the remains of an underground lab with possible resources that could cure one of all sorts of nasty things. "Alexander Isaacs."

Dolores and Spence glance at each other and say in unison," Fuck."


End file.
